Famous leaders of character in America, from the latter half of nineteenth century; the life stories of boys who have impressed their personalities on the life and history of the United States

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FAMOUS LEADERS

OF

CHARACTER

FAMOUS LEADERS SERIES

Each, one volume, illustrated $2.00

9

BY

CHARLES L. JOHNSTON

FAMOUS INDIAN CHIEFS

FAMOUS SCOUTS

FAMOUS CAVALRY LEADERS

FAMOUS PRIVATEERSMEN

FAMOUS FRONTIERSMEN

FAMOUS DISCOVERERS AND EX-
PLORERS OF AMERICA

FAMOUS GENERALS OF THE GREAT
WAR

BY

EDWIN WILDMAN
FAMOUS LEADERS OF INDUSTRY

First Series
FAMOUS LEADERS OF INDUSTRY

Second Series
FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

THE PAGE COMPANY

53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.

Courtesy of Mr. Frederick Hill Meserve

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

THE FAMOUS LEADERS' SERIES

FAMOUS LEADERS
OF CHARACTER

IN AMERICA FROM THE LATTER
HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY

THE LIFE STORIES OF BOYS WHO HAVE IMPRESSED THEIR PER-
SONALITIES ON THE LIFE AND HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

BY

EDWIN \yiLDMAN

Former Editor of The Forum

Author of "Famous Leaders of Industry, First Series."

"Famous Leaders of Industry, Second Series,"

"Reconstructing America — Our

Next Big Job," etc.

BOSTON ffi THE PAGE
COMPANY ffl MDCCCCXXII

%k

ASTO-^. LtNOX AND
-IL»»--:-^ FOUNDATIONS

Copyright, ig22,
By The Page Company

All rights reserved

Made in U. S. A.

First Impression, October, 1922

PRINTED BY C. H. SIMONDS COMPANY
BOSTON, MASS., U.S.A.

INTRODUCTION

To my boy friends :

Do you know the stirring stories in the lives of Lodge
and Harding, Wilson and Roosevelt; of Sumner and
Garrison and Phillips ; of Cleveland ; of Hale ; of Robert
E. Lee? These are men whose names stand for great
minds and brave and noble characters.

In this volume I have sought to bring together a group
of men who, unlike the average American, have counted
success, not so much in dollars and cents, as in a devotion
to high ideals. Money has been to them of secondary
consideration, if of any consideration at all. Although
they have been constantly brought in contact with the
ways and ideas of men of the world, which were abso-
lutely contrary to their ideals, these men have been loyal
and faithful in practice, as well as profession, to the
spiritual qualities of justice, mercy, purity and honesty.
They have been soldiers of the spirit, great-hearted men
of action, who have won the admiration and respect of
even their bitterest enemies.

The need of the hour has been met by these men of
moral strength. They have given out, instead of taking
in. In being true to themselves, they have been true to
others. Their early struggles to do right, developed in
them those qualities which were, later, to benefit the
world.

V

vi INTRODUCTION

Some of these men lived a long time ago, and only the
fact of their greatness has lived down to us. Their
appearance, their little peculiarities, their friendships,
their struggles have been forgotten in the brightness of
the victories — not always material, but often moral
victories — which we remember.

I have dealt chiefly with the incidents of their youth.
It is there that we find the great influences for good.
You will find that in most cases it is the boy who finds
an ambition in his boyhood, and who has the strength of
character to fight for it, plug for it, whether it be an
ideal of justice, of wealth, of philanthropy, or of power,
who wins out to greatness.

I feel that these stories will appeal to the grown man,
as much as to the boy, for it is in the daily happenings
of the home, the little incidents of school life, that future
traits of character are discerned. These qualities are not
always born in a man, but are as often gained by a
continual struggle to overcome that which is unworthy.

You will find the greatness of character that is in these
men even more interesting than the greatness of soldiers,
of Indian Chiefs, or Leaders of Industry, because these
men had harder fights to fight, and often in seeming
defeat their victory was bigger.

Edwin Wildman.

CONTENTS

PAGE

"William Lloyd Garrison 3

The man who paved the way for Lincoln

EoBERT E. Lee 17

Duty, above all things

Abraham Lincoln 29

The Great EmanciiJator

Charles. Sumner 43

A Martyr to his Principles

Horace Greeley 55

America's Pioneer Newspaper Genius

Wendell Phillips 71

The Silver-Tongued Abolitionist

Edward Everett Hale 83

Preacher, Organizer and Author

Leland Stanford 99

Great Pioneer of the West

Charles William Eliot, LL.D Ill

A Great Educational Leader

Phillips Brooks 123

Great Preacher-Philosopher

Moody and Sankey 135

Pioneer Evangelists

GRO^^:R Cleveland 153

Tivice President of the United States

John Burroughs 167

America's Great Naturalist

Henry Cabot Lodge . . « 179

Defender of the Constitution

WooDROw Wilson 195

Educator — War President — Statesman

Theodore Roose\^lt 209

The Idol of his Country

vii

viii CONTENTS

PAGE

Booker T. Washington 225

The Educational Leader of the Negro Race

WiLLLVM Jennings Bryan 239

A Crusader of Advanced Ideals

Major-General Leonard Wood .... 253

Apostle of Peace and Preparedness

Charles Evans Hughes 269

A Great American Statesman

Warren Gamaliel Harding 285

President — Champion of Sound Am,ericanism

Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis . . . .299

The Supreme Court of Baseball

Benjamin Burr Lindsey 313

A Judge icho believes all Boys are good

Calvin Coolidge 327

The Man who stood for Law and Order

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

William Lloyd Garrison {see page 3) Frontispiece

Robert E. Lee 17

Abraham Lincoln 29

Charles Sumner 43

Horace Greeley 55

Wendell Phillips 71

Edward Everett Hale 83

Leland Stanford 99

Charles William Eliot, LL.D Ill

Phillips Brooks 123

Dwight Lyman Moody 135

Ira David Sankey 145

Grover Cle\^land 153

John Burroughs 167

Henry Cabot Lodge 179

Woodrow Wilson 195

Theodore Roosevelt 209

Booker T. Washington 225

William Jennings Bryan 239

Major-General Leonard Wood .... 253

Charles Evans Hughes 269

Warren Gamaliel Harding 285

Judge Kenesaw ]\Iountain Landis . . .299

Benjamin Burr Lindsey 313

Calvin Coolidge 327

IX

WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON

(1805-1879)

THE MAN WHO PAVED THE WAY
FOR LINCOLN

FAMOUS LEADERS OF
CHARACTER

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

(1805-1879)

THE MAN WHO PAVED THE WAY
FOR LINCOLN

TEIUMPHING over adverse fortune, poverty,
and the endless struggles v^hich usually confront
the advanced reformer, William Lloyd Garrison
grew to the stature of a permanent place in the world's
history, before he died at a ripe old age.

There were handicaps from the very first, for when
Lloyd was scarcely three years old, his father left his
family in the little frame house on School Street in
Newburyport, Mass., never to return.

The romantic courtship which his father had suc-
cessfully conducted with his mother, Fanny Lloyd, the
belle of that small pioneer colony on Deer Island,
N. B., ended as swiftly as it began.

Abijah Garrison, a sailor, Lloyd's father, during one
of his brief rests ashore, spied Fanny Lloyd entering
chapel on a Sunday morning, and followed. He had
to wait till the service was over, which no doubt in-

3

4 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

spired him with inner grace, though it did not ap-
pear in the brusque manner of his instantaneous court-
ship. The girl, tall, dark, imperious, was dressed in
blue. 'Not knowing her name, the sailor called her
"Blue-jacket" and requested permission to escort her
home. He was promptly rebuffed, but later secured
a letter of introduction and, after a brief courtship,
they were married.

The audacity and courage, the boldness of Lloyd
Garrison's career, when facing the hostility that con-
fronted him in his life work of reformation in the great
National issues of temperance and abolition of slavery,
probably came from his father, though he scarcely re-
membered him. His only recollection of his father
was the vague figure of a big man with a bald head,
a reddish beard, and a noticeable scar, that was most
unsightly, on his neck and face. He was only three
years old when this sea-captain deserted his mother
without providing means of suj^port for her or her three
children. The reformer epitomizes this act of his
father's in the following comment :

"There is no doubt that his love for my mother was
almost romantic; and it is questionable, when he de-
serted her, if he meant the separation to be final."

From his mother came that deep strain of pity and
forbearance which dominated his life. Probably from
his mother also came much of his defiant spirit against
those who declined to accept the truth as he saw it,
for she had demonstrated that spirit as a young girl,
and accepted the sacrifice it involved. Her firmness of
character was inflexibly allied with her conscience.

WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 5

Her parents were Episcopalians, bigoted in their in-
tolerance for any other religious denomination. One
day when she was a young girl, out of curiosity, with
a party of young people, she attended the service of a
Baptist preacher, held in a barn. At that time the
Baptists were despised by the small community of
Episcopalians. The Baptist preacher, by the humility
of his sermon, the earnestness of his plea, completely
captured the passer-by. Shortly afterwards she an-
nounced to her family that she found it necessary for
the peace of her heart and mind publicly to acknowl-
edge the Baptist faith. Every effort and threat were
used by her parents to alter her decision, but it was
a matter of duty to God, as she regarded it, and though
she asked her parents' forgiveness, she was publicly
baptized in the Baptist faith and was banished from
•her home in consequence. She then went to live with
an uncle until she was married.

The inner fires of conscientious conviction that were
so often sorely tried in the life of Lloyd Garrison came
direct from that mother of whom, in later years, he
wrote in a letter to his fiancee :

^'I had a mother once who cared for me with pas-
sionate regard. Her mind was . . . clear, vigorous,
creative, and lustrous, and sanctified by an ever glow-
ing piety. How often did she watch over me, — weep
over me — and pray over me."

Spiritual quality was not lacking in those days of
intense, practical struggle, for during the subsequent
years of hard apprenticeship, the boy, separated from
her because the family was too poor to hold together.

6 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

never forgot to write his mother tenderly and affec-
tionately.

Up to his sixteenth year the boyhood of Lloyd Gar-
rison was a dull period of hard work. He was first
apprenticed to learn shoemaking in Lynn. He was
only nine years old then, and so small that he was de-
scribed as ^Wt much bigger than a last.'' Of course
he lacked the strength to pursue this work, but the influ-
ences of his master, Gamaliel W. Oliver, with whom
he lived, were no doubt impressive factors in his sub-
sequent career, for Oliver was a Quaker and imbued
the future reformer with his hatred of military abuses.
'No special indication of genius appeared in Lloyd dur-
ing this period of hard, obedient apprenticeship. It
seemed as though he were destined to become nothing
greater than a good, serviceable shoemaker. After a
brief trip to Baltimore, with his mother, where he
worked for a time in a shoe-factory, he returned to
his home town, ]N^ewburyport, where he was taken in
by the Birketts, poor people who allowed him to do
what a boy of ten or eleven years could do, to help
earn his board. It was then that he obtained his final
schooling at the Grammar School in the Mall. His
education, his ultimate brilliancy as a writer and an
orator, were the gifts of his genius. No special train-
ing had been his, in fact he had far less schooling than
most boys of his day.

Grim necessity of life kept him, during the most
formative years of his youth, apprenticed at some-
thing. For a time he was apprenticed to Moses Short,
a cabinet maker at Haverhill, Mass. But he became

WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 7

homesick for !N"ewburyport, and tying all liis posses-
sions in a small bundle, he slipped out of the back
window of his master's home one day and started away
on foot. When he was caught, he confessed his home-
sickness and was released from this apprenticeship law-
fully. After a brief sojourn with Deacon Bartlett,
he secured an apprenticeship in the printing shop
of the E^ewburyport Herald, owned by Ephraim W.
Allen. There he spent a seven years' apprenticeship
learning not only the trade, but th^ great power of
that trade in public opinion and intellectual freedom.
In the meantime his mother, ill but in the care of
kindly friends, remained in Baltimore, having passed
through an epidemic of yellow-fever there in 1818,
which left her in a very weak and helpless condition.
The dominant inspiration of Lloyd's career as a
writer and public speaker was the religious devotion
of his mother. To the end of his life, his favorite
habit on Sunday mornings was to sing the old tradi-
tional hjmms, ^'Coronation," ''Hebron," "Ward,"
"Denmark," "Lenox," "Majesty," accompanying him-
self on the piano with one finger. He had sung in
the boys' choir of the church, and the habit then formed
never deserted him.

It was during his apprenticeship as a printer that
Lloyd Garrison began to read extensively, his favorite
literature being poetry. Like most boys he preferred
romantic fiction, especially the Waverley novels. His
favorite poets were those of all the world, Byron,
Moore, Pope, Campbell, and others. He became en-
thusiastically attached to the poems of Mrs. Hemans,

8 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

committing them to memory. His first articles, un-
published, were political, based largely upon the en-
vironment of his home town, which was an ardent
Federalist community. In this direction of thought,
he read such leaders as Fisher Ames, Timothy Pick-
ering, and Harrison Gray Otis. He was just past six-
teen when he sent his first article to the press. Writ-
ing in a disguised hand, he posted it to the editor of
his own paper, the Herald. It was anonymously
signed "An Old Bachelor." The title of this first
effort was "Breach of the Marriage Promise,'' and
concerned the reflections of a bachelor on reading a
verdict in a breach of promise suit in Boston.
Wrote this "bachelor of sixteen'^ in 1822:
"The truth is, however, women in this country are
too much idolized and flattered; therefore, they are
puffed up and inflated with pride and conceit. . . .
For my part, notwithstanding, I am determined to lead
the ^single life' and not trouble myself about the
ladies."

The "Editor" accepted the anonymous contribution
and handed it unknowingly to the author to set up in
type. Other contributions were sent and duly pub-
lished. One of them purporting to be an account of
a shij)wreck was palpably written by some one totally
ignorant of the sea or ships. The "Editor," no more
informed about marine ways than the author, pub-
lished it in the Herald. His mother, upon hearing
of his secret contributions to the press, wisely urged
him to think well before embarking on a "pitiful"
career.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 9

^^Next, your turning Author," she writes him ac-
knowledging his confessions, ^^you have no doubt read
and heard the fate of such characters, that they gen-
erally starve to death in some garret or place that no
one inhabits. So you may see what fortune and luck
belong to you if you are of that class of people."

A similar boyish article entitled "Essay on Mar-
riage" closed his apprenticeship to the Herald, in
1825, in which he cynically reflects, "Of all the con-
ceits that ever entered into the brains of a wise man,
that of marriage is the most ridiculous." With this
casual dismissal of marriage, he closed that indefinite
period of his life and three months later became pub-
lisher and editor of the Free Press in Newburyport.
Mr. Allen, the publisher of the Herald, obligingly but
secretly loaned him the money with which to begin his
venture. The motto chosen by the future reform-
leader of world-fame was significant; it indicated the
suppressed emotions in his consciousness of l^ational
issues. The motto was, "Our Country, Our Whole
Country, and Nothing But Our Country."

Many editorial experiments came after this brief di-
rection of the Free Press that demonstrate the influ-
ences that dominated Lloyd Garrison's character. In
a narrower sense than he showed it to be later, patriot-
ism was its initial impulse. From this source of deep
expression came others with years and experience.
Once having emancipated himself from the hated ap-
prenticeships to machine labor, Lloyd Garrison ad-
vanced along the road to fame with great strides.
Even his second editorial venture as editor of the

10 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

Journal of the Times, which he took charge of at the
invitation of men in Bennington, Vermont, showed
this. Wearing Cicero's badge, a favorite quotation on
the face of his paper, ^^Reason shall prevail with us
more than Public Opinion," the young editor spread
his wings over the pages under such convincing head-
ings as '^Moral," ^'Education," ^'Temperance," ''Slav-
ery," ''Political," etc. His outstanding promise to
his subscribers was that the newspaper would remain
Independent. In his declaration of faith the ardor
and challenge of reform were fearlessly predicted.

"When the election is over, our literary and moral
departments will exhibit a fullness and excellence com-
mensurate with their importance," he writes naively,
regretting the election crisis, in spite of all.

Slavery was a political issue of bitter character in
the Presidential campaign of General Jackson, and it
was this issue that seized the heart and brain of Lloyd
Garrison when he was in the throes of his first editorial
campaign in politics. The flame kindled by Major
Lundy in Garrison's soul burned stronger, for in the
earlier numbers of the Journal he proposed the for-
mation of anti-slavery societies in Vermont. Lundy's
faith in his friend Garrison as a leader was demon-
strated when he walked from Baltimore where he was
publishing Genius, a publication devoted to the
cause of anti-slavery, to Bennington, Vermont, to in-
duce him to put his weight behind the smaller news-
paper. Garrison accepted the call to become editor
of Genius with a solemnity which was almost a sacred
vow to the great cause which he subsequently supported

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 11

so triumphantly. This was the turning-point in his
career, from the merely material interests of journal-
ism, to the definite sacrifices of a great ideal for which
the entire nation has honored him. This is fore-
shadowed in his last editorial printed just hefore his
retirement as editor of the Journal in Vermont.

^^I trust God that I may be the humble instrument
of breaking at least one chain, and restoring one cap-
tive to liberty; it will amply repay a life of severe
toil.''

The pledge was made without regard to the con-
sequences. It was a solemn vow to maintain an ideal
that had been the cause of bitter contention. The
Xorthern seaboard States were loath to loose the hu-
man cargoes of slaves shipped from the South for sale
in the ^N'orthern slave markets. The Southern States
were unwilling to abandon a profitable commerce in
slaves, also. The courage and justice of the great abo-
litionist's acceptance of the editorial policy of Genius
gave him his place in history.

A few weeks intervened between the time that Gar-
rison left Benning-ton, where he had been prosperous
and happy, for Baltimore to take up his new duties
as editor of an abolitionist organ, published in a slave
State. His address entitled ^^Dangers to the JSTation,"
delivered in Bennington, July 4th, 1824, in favor of
the colonization societies, committed him to the narrow
and dangerous pathway of Reform. It was an in-
spired arraignment of the inhumanity of slavery, a
declaration of faith in liberty and justice, in the face
of National anger and blind commercial viewpoints.

12 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

The remarkable fact that Garrison was only twenty-
four years old at this time must be noted, a promising
indication of his unselfish devotion to what he believed
was the truth. Just as his mother had sacrificed her
home ties for her faith, her son put aside his personal
comfort and safety for the ideal of his character.

A Boston newspaper, commenting on this address,
described the orator as ^^of quite youthful appearance,
and habited in a suit of black, with his neck bare, and
broad linen collar spread, over that of his coat. His
prefatory remarks were inaudible by the feebleness of
his utterance, but as he advanced, his voice was raised,
his confidence regained, and his earnestness became
perceptible.''

On his arrival in Baltimore, he informed his part-
ner. Major Lundy, that immediate and unconditional
emancipation was the only solution. This was in
August, 1829. Lundy, less radical in his views, re-
plied cautiously, ''Thee may put thy initials to thine
articles, and I will put my initials to mine, and each
will bear his own burden." Garrison accepted, adding,
"I shall be able to free my soul."

With the exception of their friendship with some of
the more intelligent colored people, both Garrison and
Lundy lived in a small circle of Quaker friends. As to
money, there was none. Garrison humorously announc-
ing, editorially, that he had not found it necessary to
own a purse. In spite of poverty, the abolitionist strug-
gled on towards his goal. Finally, he was indicted for
libel on a statement that involved a cargo of slaves
shipped from his home town, Kewburyport, to 'New Or-

WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 13

leans, which was in violation of Congressional order,
forbidding foreign slave traffic. The slaves on the ship
had been seized in Africa. The conviction by the jury,
secured in fifteen minutes, carried a fine of $100, an
amount in those days sufficiently large to be severe. It
was probably more money than Garrison or Lundy had
ever had at one time. The alternative was imprison-
ment. On April 17, 1830, Garrison entered the Balti-
more jail, and Genius suspended publication. A lit-
tle over a month later he was released through the gener-
osity of Arthur Toppin who advanced the $100 re-
quired. In the same year, without money, subscribers,
or equipment. Garrison formed a partnership with Isaac
Knapp, equally destitute, to publish The Libera-
tor, which made its appearance January 1, 1831. The
motto of this famous publication was the firebrand that
set ablaze the great conflict of bitter opinion which led
to the Civil War. It read :

^^Our Country is the World — Our Countrymen are
Mankind."

For some years in a dingy garret these two valiant
defenders of American liberty worked, slept, and lived
on meager fare. The annual expense of the editor of
The Liberator was $700. They pledged themselves
to print the paper so long as they ^'could subsist on bread
and water." The Liberator became a lusty waif, sus-
tained by mysterious friends, at unexpected times.

In 1834, when he was thirty-five years of age, the
great abolitionist married the daughter of George M.
Benson of Providence, a supporter of the anti-slavery
movement.

14 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTEE

As the cause of anti-slavery enlarged and extended
its agitation, the fire of hatred increased. George
Thompson, the agent of the London Anti-Slavery So-
ciety, arrived in Baltimore to help his American friend
who had founded the l^ew England Anti-Slavery So-
ciety through The Liherator. Garrison himself was
mobbed in the streets of Boston and had to escape from
Philadelphia after the Pennsylvania Hall, in which a
meeting had been held, was burned down by the mob.
After endless strife, bitterness, and battle, which car-
ried the determined abolitionist into the stormy period
of Lincoln's administration, he abandoned the battle-
ground of his ideals in 1865, at the age of sixty, and
The Liberator, in its thirty-fifth volume, suspended.

Without occupation or any savings account, Garrison
at this advanced age contemplated writing a ^'History of
the Anti-Slavery Movement," but he never began it. A
Xational testimonial fund was raised by his friends,
which gave him a competence, and in May, 1879, at the
age of seventy-four, he died at his daughter's home in
!N'ew York, where he had gone for medical treatment.

The last few years of his life were agreeably spent in
travel in Europe. During this peaceful period he wrote
many articles, always in line with the reform spirit of
his character.

He lived and died in the pioneer spirit of a fear-
less, vigorous, determined idealist who had no selfish or
material profit from any of his work.

EGBERT E. LEE

(1807-1870)

DUTY, ABOVE ALL THINGS

From " Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee," published b\
Doubleday, Page & Co.

ROBERT E. LEE

EGBERT E. LEE

(1807-1870)

DUTY, ABOVE ALL THINGS

THE supreme test of a man born to be a soldier is
his obedience to duty. This is well established in
past history. And the strategy of war, like the
strategy of character, aims to win. Though defeat does
not wholly disqualify a soldier, it does impose on him
the penalty of surrender.

General Eobert E. Lee, Commander of the Confeder-
ate Forces in the field against General Grant, though
defeated, is a superb figure in history. Much has been
said in the South of his aristocratic ancestors. The
pride of blood in his native State, Virginia, has survived
three centuries of American democracy. Still, the pre-
dominant feature of Lee's character was the simple
pride in doing his duty. He never took credit for his
acts on the ground that he was a distinguished de-
scendant of the F. F. V.'s (First Families of Virginia).
There is nothing in his letters, or in his memoirs of his
friends, that reveals the slightest trace of this. He
looked and lived what he was born, a gentleman. In
spite of his surrender to Grant, he knew disaster, but
not defeat. Defeat of personal character was never his.

The issues of the Civil War have been submerged in

17

18 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

the magnanimous impulse to forgive and forget that is
essentially a characteristic of American manhood. It is
not necessary to attach these issues to this brief reflection
on Lee's place in history. He himself was among the
men who frankly urged the tolerance of reconstruction
sentiment after the Civil War was over. To those who
read this from the shadow of their own experiences in
the World War, Lee's conduct as a man is impressive.

In 1807, when the leader of the Confederate Army
was horn, Washington's personality still survived, a vig-
orous, living influence, although he had been dead about
twenty years. General Lee's father had married a Car-
ter, and in the parlor of the Lee homestead hung a por-
trait of General Washington, personally presented to
General i^elson, who gave it to his daughter, Mrs. Car-
ter. The old Virginia families, in 1807, still talked of
and emulated the spirit and character of Washington,
as if he were yet to be seen on the wide veranda of his
home in Mount Vernon. ISTot less prominent in ISTa-
tional life than Washington was the Lee family. Gen-
eral Lee's father, ^'Light Horse Harry" Lee, was a
famous character of colonial quality. The Lees and the
Carters had always been Governors, or officials of high
rank, in Virginia.

As a young man, General Lee had all the appearance,
reserve of manner, and gentleness of character that he
had inherited from his ancestors, who, in the days of
Charles II of England, had been cavaliers. But his
ideal was not among these swash-buckling heroes of the
English Court. He was dominated by the character of
Washington. He had heard so much about him at home,

ROBERT E. LEE 19

that he knew him* as well as if he had really met him.
His father had been selected by Congress to deliver the
memorial address on Washington's death, in which he
wrote that immortal phrase in eulogy of the great Gen-
eral, ^Tirst in war, first in peace, first in the hearts
of his countrjTaen.'^ This tribute of a Lee to the mem-
ory of the First President of the United States seemed
to glow inwardly in the character of Robert E. Lee,
the soldier.

The Lee homestead, called Stratford, was built by
Thomas Lee, grandson of Richard Lee who emigrated
from England in 1641-2 and founded the family.
When the old mansion was burned do\^m, Queen Anne,
in recognition of services rendered by the. Lees in Vir-
ginia, contributed liberally to the restoration of the man-
sion. It is a historical landmark in America. In it,
also, were born two signers of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, Richard Henry Lee and his brother, Erancis
Lightfoot Lee.

Against the background of blooded ancestry Robert
E. Lee grew up with a profound devotion to the princi-
ples of George Washington, whom, it has been claimed,
he resembled in character, mould, and formula of expres-
sion. Traces of this influence on General Lee's life are
obvious in the style of his letters and in the religious
impulses that prevailed in him in the midst of war.

His father died when he was eleven years old, and he
was brought up by his mother. His boyhood was spent
in Alexandria, alive with Washingtonia, and he attended
the same church as Washington had. His choice of a
military career took him to the West Point Military

20 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHARACTER

Academy in 1825, when he was eighteen. He entered
as a cadet from Virginia, having received his appoint-
ment from Andrew Jackson, to whom he applied in
person.

Shortly after his graduation, with the minor rank of
Lieutenant, he married his old playmate, Miss May
Parke Custis, the granddaughter of Washington's step-
son. Mrs. Lee was an heiress, the Lieutenant was poor,
but her pride in him was so great that she decided to
live on her husband's small income for a time. Later,
when her husband, commanding the Confederates, was
struggling to relieve the Southern States of their plight
for food, this training of her early married life in
economy came in handy.

Lee was assigned to the Engineers Corps, and his
training ground was in the Mexican War. His services
in Mexico, distinguished for personal bravery and
strategic ability, secured the opinion of General Scott
that he was "the greatest living soldier in America."

It was also General Scott, when the Civil War was
imminent, who wrote to Lincoln in regard to his selec-
tion of a commander of the Union Army, "Let it be
Robert E. Lee."

His appointment in 1852 as Superintendent of the
Academy at West Point lasted three years. At the end
of that time he was assigned to active duty on the South-
ern frontier with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel of a
cavalry regiment organized by Jefferson Davis, then
Secretary of War. In 1859 he was assigned to com-
mand a force of marines sent .to Harpers Ferry to cap-
ture John Brown and his followers.

EGBERT E. LEE 21

It is claimed, and sustained in some quarters, that
President Lincoln actually offered the command of the
L^'nion forces to Eobert E. Lee. Asserting that Francis
Preston Blair, at the instance and request of Lincoln,
made him this offer. General Lee says, in a letter of
February 25, 1868 (after the war) :

^^After listening to his remarks, I declined the offer
he made me to take command of the army that was to
be brought into the field, stating as candidly and as
courteously as I could that, though opposed to secession
and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion
of the Southern States."

Shortly after this he resigned his commission in the
United States Army, declaring he never wished to draw
his sword again ''save in defense of his native State."

Reared from boyhood in the school of thought that
believed ardently in States' Rights, that is, in preserving
the privilege of any State to withdraw amicably from
the Union and rejoin later if it saw fit to do so, Lee
supported the secession of Virginia in principle. His
father, once Governor of Virginia, had declared in open
debate at the Virginia Convention, ''Virginia is my
country, her will I obey, however lamentable the fate
to which it may subject me."

It is not surprising that his son, Robert E. Lee, felt
the same bonds that tied him to Virginia. On April
23, 1860, he received at the hands of the President of
the State Convention, the commission of Major-General
of the Virginia forces. Lee's reply of acceptance,
spoken extemporaneously, is characteristic of his atti-
tude in the face of a crisis.

22 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

^^I accept the position assigned me by your partiality.
I would have much preferred that your choice had fallen
on an abler man. Trusting in Almighty God, an ap-
proving conscience, and the aid of my fellow citizens, I
devote myself to the service of my native State, in whose
behalf alone will I ever again draw my sword." Later,
when he became a National figure, and Virginia had
been invaded, he became an ofiicer of the armies of the
Confederate States.

About the military strategy of the Civil War there is
nothing to add to the volumes already written. The
purpose of the ISTorth to bottle up the South, to isolate
it from food supply and outside communication, was the
broad plan of the campaign. Blockading the ports be-
gan with the first shot at Fort Sumter.

Lee's attitude toward war, as one of the human dis-
asters of the world, was one of tolerance and strategy.
He did not share the opinion of some Generals, that war
is an indiscriminate assault to the death of one people
against another. He prescribed and observed certain
fixed modifications of conduct in war. In orders issued
January 27, 1863, from his headquarters at Chambers-
burg, Pa., Lee defined the restrictions, or rather the
ethics, of war.

"... ISTo greater disgrace could befall the Army,
and through it our whole people, than the perpetration of
the barbarous outrages upon the innocent and defense-
less and the wanton destruction of private property that
have marked the course of the enemy in our own coun-
try. ... It must be remembered that we make war
only on armed men and that we cannot take vengeance

EGBERT E. LEE 23

for the wrong our people have suffered without lowering
ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been
excited by the atrocities of our enemy, and offending
against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without
whose favor and support our efforts must prove all in
vain."

Lee's critics of the years immediately following the
Civil War claimed that as a soldier he was not al-
ways vigorous enough. He was never known to put a
spy to death, and his clemency towards deserters, usually
men who were distraught by letters from home full of
distressing stories of hunger, was marked. He was a
man who declined to mistrust his fellow-man for unfair
or unjust conduct. Unquestionably tender-hearted, the
General commanding the Confederate Forces was a sol-
dier of the old school. He always slept in a tent, for
fear of disturbing the occupants of houses he might
have used for headquarters. His mind was never
wholly in the rage of war; he refused to smother his
human instincts toward his "enemies" ; he was keenly
susceptible to the duty he owed others.

He was devoted to animals, and children disarmed
his formality. Standing one day with officers of his
staff in the yard of a house on a hill, the enemy lo-
cated them and directed a hot fire on them. Suggest-
ing that the others take refuge elsewhere, he remained
where he was. Watching him, they saw him pick up a
young bird, carry it across the yard and put it safely
on the limb of a tree.

One of Lee's outstanding traits was his piety. His
principle as a soldier, in this respect, is revealed in a

24 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

letter lie wrote in 1856 : "We are all in the hands of a
Kind God who will do for us what is best, and more
than we deserve, and we have only to endeavor to
deserve more, and to do our duty to Him, and to our-
selves. May we all deserve His mercy, His care, His
protection."

The retreat from Gettysburg and the surrender of
Lee's Army at Appomattox were the surrender of a man
to his accepted duty. In the closing days of the Civil
War, Bishop Wilmer asked him if he was sanguine
of the result.

"At present I am not concerned with results,'' re-
plied Lee. "God's will ought to be our aim, and I am
quite contented that His designs should be accomplished
and not mine."

The reckoning of his soul with the piety of his con-
science was always the calm refuge of Lee in defeat.
In his farewell address to his Army he said :

"You will take with you the satisfaction that pro-
ceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully per-
formed, and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will
extend to you His blessing and protection. With an
increasing admiration of your constancy and devotion
to your country and a grateful remembrance of your
kind and generous consideration of myself, I bid you
an affectionate farewell."

The inward agony of the hour of his defeat at Ap-
pomattox has only been indicated in a despairing ges-
ture, as he left the courthouse after signing the articles
of capitulation, and rode silently away. Lee was si-
lent in moments of strong emotion. Only a few words

ROBERT E. LEE 25

were possible for him as his scattered, bareheaded
soldiers gathered about him as he reached them.
They clung to his saddle, to his stirrups, weeping
and crying.

^^Men^ we have fought through the war together. I
have done my best for you ; my heart is too full to say
more," he said, and rode away. On another occasion
when he was inspecting a line of troops drawn up along
the road, an officer at his side said, ^'These are all Vir-
ginians, General." Lee removed his hat, and rode
bareheaded, silent, down the line in honor of the men.
It was more eloquent than words.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, General Lee was
the storm center of all the ill-will and rancor of the
period. It was inferred that he would be indicted for
treason by the Government. He wrote to Grant stat-
ing that he thought the officers and men of the Army
of Northern Virginia were by the terms of their sur-
render protected from molestation. Grant instantly re-
plied in full agreement with General Lee and went at
once to President Johnson and threatened to resign
his own command unless the indictment was quashed.

Duty was General Lee's chief summons to action.
After the war he urged the healing of all dissen-
sions.

''1 have," he said, ^^invariably recommended this
course since the cessation of hostilities, and have en-
deavored to practice it myself."

After declining the most alluring offers to adorn
some brilliant commercial enterprises where his name
would have garnered the profits, General Lee finally

26 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

accepted tlie post of President of Washington Univer-
sity in Lexington, Va., at a salary of $1500.

"If my name is worth $50,000/' he said to a pro-
moter who desired to attach it, "do you not think I
ought to be very careful about taking care of it ?"

Duty was his captain, and he obeyed Duty to his
last day, October 30, 1870, when he died peacefully in
the Lee homestead.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

(1809-1865)

THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

THS NEW YQRK
PUBLIC LIBRARY

.^srol^, LENOX

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

(1809-1865)

THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR

IT is difficult to imagine in these days of steam heat,
elevators, tall buildings, and trolleys what a wil-
derness looks like. In the forest lands of any big
mountain range, miles and miles away from any house,
with no road or path to follow, perhaps one might get
an idea of the surroundings in which Abraham Lin-
coln, the wonderful man who abolished slavery, lived
as a boy. Xot that it matters much where a boy grows
up, if he is the right kind of a boy; and though many
writers of Lincoln's life have dwelt upon the disadvan-
tages of his lack of education and the poverty of his
birth, the important fact to remember in it is, — that
he was the right kind of a boy from the start.

He was so poor that he did not have what we, to-day,
consider the necessities of life; but he was a fortunate
boy, because he had a strong body, was afraid of noth-
ing, could make a joke and take one, and was always
ready to see fair-play and justice for himself and
others.

It may be unfortunate to be born as poor as Abraham
Lincoln was^ but many poor boys grow up to be rich
in deeds for which they are honored.

29

30 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

A log-cabin may not be a very comfortable place,
but to Lincoln, as a boy, it wasn't mucb worse than
other wooden houses in which those Americans lived who
had to do the best they could in a wild, sparsely inhab-
ited country. Every one had to camp out in those days.
Even though it was poverty which forced them to camp
out, it was just the best kind of training for a boy who
had anything in him. He had some exceptional quali-
ties to be sure, qualities which gave him the strength
to stand like a human rock of stone and pity against
the deluge of blood and passion that spent its force
upon him in the Civil War.

As a boy and young man he was tireless, courageous,
a giant in size and physical strength, and with it all
he was modest and would acknowledge a mistake as
quickly as he would fight for his rights. Just a bright
American boy, was Lincoln, with a kindly character
and a sense of humor that grew upon him in young
manhood, and lingered even in the trials that beset him
in the White House.

In one of Lincoln's school books of exercises, in a
nice, round, neat handwriting, is his first joke, written
when he was about seven years old. He wrote these
fair lines of school-boy mischief :

"Abraham Lincoln,
His hand and pen;
He will be good, but
God knows when."

His mother, IN^ancy Hanks Lincoln, was a woman of
simplicity and strength. She had married his father

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 31

because she loved him^ and when Abe was born, she
was living with his father in the poorest kind of a
shack in the wildest part of Kentucky. But, even
though she may have felt the pinch of poverty, she did
her duty towards this boy, tenderly and with the affec-
tion of motherhood. She taught him not only to read,
but she awakened his imagination with fairy stories
and legends that influenced his nature through all his
life. His kindness, humor, humanity, and hatred of
slavery came from his mother. This last impression
was deeply rooted in the boy, inherited with the bit-
ter rage his mother had for it. Nancy Hanks hated
slavery and sympathized with the slaves she had often
seen in bondage, during her girlhood. To Abe, she
gave that rich inheritance of humanity and pity, that
became his martyrdom years later.

Abe used to read anything he could get, but there
were five books that were the books on which his mind
fastened, which nourished his soul. They were the
Bible, ^^^sop's Fables,'' ^^Eobinson Crusoe," ^Til-
grim's Progress," "A History of the United States,"
and Weem's ^'Life of Washington." In themselves
these books form an inspiring start in the world. When
he got so that he knew these books by heart, and there
was no way of getting any more, he would read the
^^Statutes of Indiana," and find them interesting. He
had a habit of copying extracts from these books. His
pen was made from the feather of a turkey-buzzard,
there being no geese at hand to make quill-pens from,
and the ink was made of briar-root. Paper was scarce
and expensive, so the boy would scratch away with his

32 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

turkey-buzzard pen and his home-made ink on a board,
copying his work on paper later. His slate often was
the wooden fire shovel and his slate pencil a charred
stick, sharpened. Being a real backwoodsman, at the
age of seven Abe could use an ax. He helped build
the second log-cabin in Pigeon Creek, Indiana, where
his mother died.

This was his first sorrow. Nancy Hanks was a vic-
tim of a pestilence that visited the early settlers when
Abe was nine years old. He and his sister Sarah waited
on their mother during her illness. Just before she
died, she placed her hand on Abe's head and said, "Be
good to one another.'' This became the deepest inspi-
ration of Lincoln's life, it being his silent prayer for
humanity during the trying war days in the White
House.

^'I owe all that I am or hope to be to my sainted
mother," he said when he was President.

These first years in the wilderness brought out the
superior strength and character of a boy, as only hard
camp life in the open can. Lincoln reached manhood
with this supreme advantage. He was six feet four
inches tall. He could lift and carry a weight of six
hundred pounds, and he had a sense of humor that made
him popular among young and old. He fought his way
up the ladder because he was too active to stay at the
bottom.

The greatest gift Lincoln had was the clearness of his
arguments. It was this talent, developed when he
was young, discovered in his boyhood almost, that
helped him to the front in ISTational life. It was a gift

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 33

he worked hard to achieve. His ability to press home a
maxim or a conclusion by some homely figure of speech,
some tale that illustrated his point, was a studied art
of speechmaking. It was the custom in those early
days, before politics became too complicated, for boys
to boast that they would some day be ^Tresident."
Lincoln, in all his reading, wanted to fit himself for a
profession, but in a joking way he used to sgiy, "I'll be
President," and when they made fun of him he would
answer, "Oh! I'll study and get ready, and then the
chance will come."

Part of his "study" was to achieve a clearness of
expression, a simple formula with which to drive home
his point. He acknowledged how he had been in-
fluenced to make this study.

"I never went to school more than six months in my
life," he said, "but I can say this: that among my
earliest recollections I remember how, when a mere
child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to
me in a way I couldn't understand. I don't think I
ever got angry at anything else in my life^ but that al-
ways disturbed my temper; and has ever since. I can
remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the
neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and
spending no small part of the night walking up and
down and trying to make out what was the exact
meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. When
I caught the idea, — I repeated it over and over, until
I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for
any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of
passion with me^ and has stuck by me."

34 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

By the time Lincoln was twenty-two lie left his
father's roof, where his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lin-
coln, had taken his mother's place and done all she
conld for him ; and he began his own battle of life —
alone.

The principal means of conveyance in those days
was the water-ways, and families moving from one
State to another usually hired a flat-bottomed boat and
poled up or floated down the rivers. Lincoln, as a
young man, knew the channels, and he piloted many a
flat-boat through the Illinois River. For awhile he
lived at 'New Salem^ where he had the reputation of
being able to beat any one in the country at running,
jumping, or wrestling. Here he was taunted by a
gang of bullies, led by Jack Armstrong. This resulted
in a victorious fioht for vouns; Lincoln and was of OTeat
importance to his whole life, for it gave him a standing
in the community which never left him years later. He
had subdued a gang of toughs who had disturbed the
whole neighborhood for years, and earned even their
respect, for they voted him ''the cleverest fellow that
has ever broken into the settlement."

In ^ew Salem he clerked in a store and, having
some time on his hands, mastered the English gram-
mar from a textbook which was loaned to him.

When he was twenty-three, encouraged by his popu-
larity and the probable support of the county, he an-
nounced himself as a candidate for the General As-
sembly of Illinois. This was all that was necessary.
A candidate was expected only to declare his senti-
ments with regard to local affairs. He made his dec-

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 35

laration in a circular of two thousand words, and
wound up his appeal with the modesty that was char-
acteristic of him.

"Considering, fellow citizens, the great degree of
modesty which should always attend youth, it is prob-
able I have already been more presuming than be-
comes me. . . . Every man is said to have his peculiar
ambition. Whether it is true or not, I can say for one
that I have no other so great as that of being truly
esteemed by my fellow-men by rendering myself worthy
of their esteem. ... If the good people in their wis-
dom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have
been too familiar with disappointments to be very
much chagrined."

He distributed these circulars himself. His ac-
quaintance with his constituents was promising. They
almost adored him for the qualities of character he
had already demonstrated. It was these first constitu-
ents of his public career who christened him ''Honest
Abe," a title conferred upon him by the people, which
he never outgi^ew. He failed to get the election, al-
though he made a good showing. This was the only
time in his dife that Abraham Lincoln was defeated
by a direct vote of the people.

It was by accident that he became a lawyer. He
found an old copy of ''Blackstone's 'Commentaries' "
and devoured it. Discovered one day by his employer,
sitting on a woodpile reading a book, he was asked what
he was doing there.

"I'm studying," replied Abe.

"Studyin' what ?" he was asked.

36 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

"LsiW, sir," was the empliatic reply, which so aston-
ished his employer that he left him alone.

He was appointed postmaster in 1833, but the reve-
nue was so small that he had to do odd jobs, the one
he got oftenest being splitting rails. But the oppor-
tunities of the postmaster to extend his acquaintance,
to enlarge an intimacy in local circles, were great.

Political conscience was something Abraham Lin-
coln prized very highly, so much so that when John
Calhoun offered him the position of deputy surveyor
in the State, he went to Springfield to see him. Cal-
houn was a Jackson man^ Lincoln was a follower of
Henry Clay. He refused to accept the appointment if
it had any political obligation. When this assurance
was given him, the only difficulty in the way was the
fact that he knew nothing about surveying. He mas-
tered the rudiments of this work in six weeks by work-
ing night and day at the study of it. During his sur-
veying trips he vastly increased his political advan-
tages, by his personality and his fund of good stories
that gave him a reputation throughout the country.
He would joke with people, tell stories to girls and
boys, nurse the babies, — do anything to accommodate
anybody.

His first stump speech illustrates the homely, sincere,
humorous quality of Lincoln as a young man, which
mellowed into the splendor of deep feeling in the ora-
tory of his later life. It was delivered at a public
sale, in a village a few miles outside of Springfield,
Hlinois.

^Tellow Citizens — I presume you all know who I

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 37

am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been
solicited by my friends to become a candidate for the
Legislature. My politics are ^short and sweet/ like the
old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank.
I am in favor of the internal improvement system
and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments
and political principles. If elected, I shall be thank-
ful ; if not it will be all the same."

Young Lincoln's ambition at twenty-five was lifted to
the highest possible pitch when he fell in love with
Anne Rutledge. She was a girl superior in education
and inheritance, to himself, and reciprocated his feel-
ing; but she died shortly afterwards. Under the in-
fluence of her love, he spoke with a fire he had never
used before in his campaign for election to the Legis-
lature, and was triumphantly elected. After his elec-
tion he realized that he could not go to the capital at
Vandalia in the shabby clothes he had worn in New Sa-
lem. The dilemma was a great joke to him, though,
and he went to another joker with his problem.

^'Smoot, did you vote for me ?" Lincoln asked him.

''I did that very thing."

^'Well — that makes you responsible. You must
lend me money to buy suitable clothing, for I want to
make a decent appearance in the Legislature."

^'How much do you want ?"

^ About two hundred dollars, I reckon."

And he received that amount on the spot.

Twenty-five years later Abraham Lincoln's fame had
reached a National size, and at the Chicago Conven-
tion of the Republican Party, in the spring of 1860^ he

38 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTEE

was nominated for President of the United States, in
the running with Seward, Chase, and others.

Lincoln's notification by the Committee, of his nom-
ination, was a very modest ceremony. Perhaps a dozen
people were in the street, in front of his house, when
the gentlemen arrived. Lincoln's son was astride a
gatepost ; his wife, who had been Mary Todd, was b^^sy
about the house. They entered the plain, two-story
house, and Lincoln listened to the formal announce-
ment. His reply was short. Then with great relief,
as if the event had been one of much annoyance, he
shook hands all round and began to tell a story.

The bitterness, the dissension of feeling over the
slave question, Lincoln's own positive position as the
enemy of slavery, aroused the people of the x^orthern
and Southern States to intense conflict. Lincoln's elec-
tion meant the signal of rebellion. Secession began im-
mediately following his nomination^ led by South Caro-
lina. Seven other Southern States followed. Presi-
dent Buchanan, in deference to the Southern men in
his Cabinet, did not oppose secession. The problem
of preserving the Union was left to Lincoln. He be-
gan his career in the White House with the grim spec-
ter of a civil war confronting him. In his farewell to
his old stepmother, whom he went to see prior to his
inauguration, when she feared that he would be assas-
sinated, he said:

"]^o, no. Mother, they will not do that. Trust in
the Lord and all will be well; we shall see each other
again.''

His inauguration literally transformed Washington

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 39

into an armed camp. There was great fear that he
would be killed. The carriage in which Lincoln rode
to the Capitol was so closely guarded that it could not
be seen by the crowd. Sharp-shooters were on the
roofs along the line of mai*ch. A board tunnel was
built, and strongly guarded, through which he could
enter the Capitol. He was used to danger, he had
faced it all his life.

From the date of Lincoln's inauguration to the fatal
night of his assassination, April 14, 1865, his life was
one of martyrdom for a cause for which he was ready
to lay down his life.

His fine sense of justice, his forgiveness of enemies
and rivals, the self-sacrifice in all the great events of
his life, his consideration for others, his humility, and
his unswerving courage in face of danger, were not
merely the inheritance of humble origin, but rather the
supreme triumph of character sustained with a mighty
will and purpose.

CHAELES SUMNER

(1811-1874)

A MAETYE TO HIS PEINCIPLES

Courtesy of Mr. Frederick Hill Meserve

CHARLES SUMNER

:^^^'

„^7 -

v*""?-

CHARLES SUMNER

(1811-1874)

A MARTYR TO HIS PRINCIPLES

HARVARD, in 1826, when Charles Sumner en-
tered it, was the same delightful center of am-
bition for young aristocrats of learning that it
is to-day. There were certain unwritten laws as to de-
portment, manner^ and in those days, dress, which have
made Harvard the cradle of American gentlemen.

Young Sumner always regarded his personal ap-
pearance with the utmost care. His clothes took almost
as large a share of his attention as his studies, but
he had a will of his own which, as a college student,
determined his right to a personal liberty in what he
wore. This led to a difference of opinion with the fac-
ulty, when he was an undergraduate, in which Sumner
obstinately stood out for his personal rights, as firmly
as he stood out later in the great issues of the Nation,
which he defended according to his point of view.

There was a generally accepted rule at Harvard that
the students should wear white waistcoats. When the
tall, noticeably thin young man, Charles Sumner, ap-
peared in a buff waistcoat which he prized highly, he
was informed that the general regulations demanded
that he wear a white waistcoat. Regarding this as an

infringement of his personal rights, and having a pride

43

44 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

in tliis particular waistcoat, he insisted that it was not
buff, but a dull white. The young man had a fine sense
of color, for he usually wore this fancy waistcoat
with a cloak of blue camel's hair, that would have
been outraged by a glaring white waistcoat. However,
he was told that a buff v\^aistcoat could not be, and never
would be, white. He claimed that it was white, ''or
nearly enough so to comply with the rule." He per-
sisted in this position and finally carried his point,
wearing it in spite of the regulations. He refused to
distinguish buff from white. His will v/as adamant,
even then. His will was his dictator all his life.

He was a rather self-assertive young man, unbend-
ing in his convictions, not interested in sports, or pretty
girls, or any other privileges of his student days,
except the privilege of study. The light burned at all
hours of the night in his room^ where he spent most
of his time alone, studying. His friend, Wendell Phil-
lips, who was one class below him, remembered these
traits of Sumner as a youth. Considering the out-
standing place he reached in the critical affairs of the
E"ation, it is probable that these studious habits formed
at Harvard were the source of his distinguished
triumphs in the Senate as an orator. Some have com-
pared it, in moments of tense National importance, to
the eloquence of Daniel Webster.

At the time when Charles Sumner was beginning his
brilliant career as one of the aristocratic leaders of
American liberty^ two other great men were struggling
against poverty, lack of education, and such handicaps
as Sumner never had — Horace Greeley, at a printing

CHARLES SUMNER 45

case in a little country newspaper in Vermont; and
Abraham Lincoln, a clerk in a country store in Illinois.
Sumner was born the same year that Horace Greeley
was born, when Lincoln in his infancy was just emerg-
ing from the obscurity of the log-cabin in Kentucky.
^N'ot that the superior advantages which the young man
enjoyed at Harvard could alone have advanced him to
the high position he held in American statesmanship
later, for he was a man of superb genius and tremen-
dous industry, but he represents a type of man in Amer-
ican progress, created and nursed into action by totallj'
different influences than those of Lincoln or Greeley.
His father, Charles Pinckney Sumner, was an aus-
tere, rather distant sort of man, which his appointment
as High Sheriff did not soften. The social and finan-
cial success of his later life enabled him to send Charles
to Harvard and to surround him with an atmosphere
of cultured associates which developed in him an air of
leisure and charm of manner that placed him among the
dilettanti of his period. He was brought up to regard
himself as an aristocrat ; not an arrogant European sort,
but a most affable, helpful, kindly type of man, kindly
because he felt an assured superiority. Pride of birth
and intense self-respect were the benefits of his New
England ancestry. Although his father had a family
of nine children, of whom Charles Sumner was the eld-
est, he left an estate of over $50,000 in his will, which
in those days was great wealth. Charles' boyhood was
one of ease and comparative luxury, with an education
in the superior Latin School and a training at Harvard.
Always a champion of peace, it seems odd that when

46 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

he was fifteen lie should have wished to enter the Mil-
itary Academy at West Point.

J^ew England, especially Boston, has been the cradle
of leaders in National life, in literature, in all the de-
sirable and important branches of culture. Among
Charles Sumner's friends and schoolmates were men
who shared public fame with him. Besides Wendell
Phillips, were such men as James Freeman Clarke,
Robert C. Winthrop, George S. Hilliard. His intellect-
ual nursery was among the famous. Daniel Webster,
the pride of Massachusetts, knew him well as a boy, and
President John Quincy Adams attended his graduation
at the Latin School.

There was nothing amazing or inspiring in his school
days or in his college life at Harvard. He did fairly
well all that was expected of him. The first indica-
tion that the Puritan blood in him would be the force
that governed him in later years was when he was made
president of a college temperance society. Socially,
he took high rank everywhere in Boston, and in fact
through all his life. As a youth he was tall, lean, self-
conscious, and shy ; as a young man he was delightfully
agreeable, always anxious to help others, and indefat-
igable in his search for knowledge from others. The
young men of his class, nearly a century ago, were in-
spired by the bearing and manner of thought of such
men as Daniel Webster, whom they met on the street,
whose voice they heard often in debate or address. Sum-
ner was a particularly ardent admirer of Webster, who
had once grasped him by the hand and promised him that
"the public held a pledge for him," after listening to

CHAELES SUMNER 47

a prize essay the young man had delivered when he was
twenty-one.

In his youth. Sumner was rather sickly. One of his
classmates refers to him in a letter as among the hard
students while at Harvard.

"Sumner will be a vast reservoir of law, if he lives
to be at the bar; which, if you take the bodings of a
harsh, constant cough and most pale face, might seem
doubtful."

Another fellow student writes Sumner :

"Take a country tour — a long pedestrian tour. . . .
Give the pallid face a little color, those lean limbs a
little muscle, and the brawn of your mind a greater
elasticity.''

And another writes him :

"Be careful of your health, my friend, and the day
is not far distant when- I shall have the proud satis-
faction of saying that 'Sumner was once my classmate.' "

His interest in the theater was aroused by the pep
formance of Charles Kemble's daughter, Frances Kem-
ble, as "Juliet." She was twenty-one and he was
twenty-two. He walked from- Harvard Square, every
night, to the Tremont Theater in Boston, to see her.
But ladies' society never interested him, however, to any
alarming degree. A famous beauty once made a bet
she would capture him, and maneuvered to have him
take her in to dinner. On the other side of him sat a
famous old scholar and Sumner soon forgot her presence
in conversation with the savant. The young lady paid
her bet, frankly.

At the end of four years in Cambridge at the Law

48 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

School, young Sumner returned to his father's home,
bursting with scholarship and memorized law, but v/ith-
out any definite plans for the future. It was not nec-
essary^ for him to work, and for a while he didn't. At
the end of this time he became a student in a law ofUce
in Boston, where* he browsed in the excellent law li-
brary, doing no drudgery as a copyist, chiefly engaged
in long conversation with his learned master. He wrote
some excellent contributions to the Jurist, chiefly law
essays. Those who knew Charles Sumner in his youth
were divided as to whether his career would be in the
paths of literature or in the law. He was admitted to
the bar in Worcester, Mass., when he was twenty-three.

His first visit to Washington, where he later became
a dominating figure in the Senate, brought him into
contact with Rufus Choate, then in the House of Rep-
resentatives; and he listened to su,ch giants as Clay,
Webster, Calhoun, in the Senate; and visited the Su-
preme Court, when Marshall was Chief Justice. So-
cially, also, he was invited everywhere and made a
good impression for his evident learning and manly
bearing.

Sumner was conscious, in his youth, that he would
not make a success as a practicing lawyer. With some
vague premonition of his future^ he had closely studied
the tricks of oratory of the great orators in Washing-
ton, as his letters indicate. A former classmate, writ-
ing to him, shortly after his return from Washington,
summed up Sumner's future for him, and his handi-
caps. It is interesting because it may have a bearing
upon young law students of the present day, who feel

CHARLES SUMNER 49

the same hindrances to their success as Sumner did in
his youth.

^'You are not rough shod enough to travel in the
stony and broken road of homely, harsh, everyday
practice. . . . Instead of looking back with regret to
the practice which you are to leave to other spirits
touched less finely, and to far less fine issues . . . look
forward."

The influence of this generous and complimentary
advice may have borne fruit, for young Sumner ac-
cepted a position as instructor at the Law School, in
Cambridge. During the following three years he
wrote many articles for the Jurist, and he did
literary collaborations with such men as Judge Story,
Professor Greenleaf, and Andrew Dunlap, Attorney-
General for Massachusetts. This literary drudgery
finally affected his health. He had been outdistanced
by young men of his period. Wendell Phillips, his
schoolmate, became a prominent speaker when Sum-
ner was unknown. Robert C. Winthrop and Hilliard,
young men of equal education, were already in the Leg-
islature when Sumner was twenty-six. These facts
may have preyed on him silently, for he took a vaca-
tion, and returned improved in health and spirits.
Also, he brought back with him some very definite
views on the slavery question.

]N'ot until he returned from his long-anticipated trip
to Europe when he was thirty, did Charles Sumner
reach the stride of his great career. He settled down
to practice as a lawyer, going punctually to his office
in Boston every morning at nine, but for a year or so

50 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

he made no progress. His first articles in opposition
to slavery were published in the Boston Advertiser
and established his position on the issue. He con-
tended that slavery was against ^NTational Right, and
urged that his friend Longfellow's anti-slavery poems
be read the world over. His friendship with Rev. Dr.
William Ellery Channing became a great influence, at
this time, but it was not until 1845, when he was thirty-
four, that he began public speaking on the Lyceum cir-
cuits. The first indication of his gift as a public
speaker came wdien he delivered the oration be-
fore the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard at its
anniversary. It was a tribute to four eminent gradu-
ates of the college who had recently died : the Scholar,
John Pickering; the Jurist, Judge Story; the Artist,
Washington Allston; and the Philanthropist, William
E. Channing. These men had all been his personal
friends, and there entered into his oration that blaze
of feeling that had been too long submerged in the stu-
dent of books. He spoke without notes, in a clear, dis-
tinct voice, with an easy manner which enchanted his
audience. Longfellow made this entry in his journal
after hearing the oration :

''A grand, elevated, eloquent oration from Sumner.
He spoke it with gTcat ease and elegance; and was
from beginning to end triumphant.'^

His power as an orator was established from that
address, and everything he said or did publicly after
that was received with profound respect and important
attention. He was thirty-five years of age when this
happened. His next lecture, ^White Slavery in the

CHARLES SUMNER 51

Barbary States," which was a subtle reflection on the
horrors of slavery, made an impression. Mrs. Harriet
Beecher Stowe, the author of '^Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
had an illustrated edition of this lecture by Sumner
published. She wrote Sumner after reading it: "It
appears to me to be fi.tted to a high class of mind, just
that class which it is exceedingly difficult to meet."

Although himself a man with the most careful re-
gard for caste, he was among the first to lead the army
in the contest against caste feeling. He argued be-
fore the Supreme Court the right for colored children
to occupy the same schoolrooms with white children.
The Court rendered an adverse decision, but the Legis-
lature of Massachusetts, a few years later, prohibited
separation of the races into different schools.

Sumner's attitude as the champion of anti-slavery
severed him from his popularity in Boston society.
He lost many friends, but his will was supreme. He
was often cut in society, and he kept more and more
aloof from it. Shut out from homes where he had
been welcome, he wrote Longfellow, — "I do feel the
desolation of my solitude." His active interests in
reform increased, however. He fought the admission
of Texas as a State, the Mexican War bill, then* he
entered into a controversy with Robert C. Winthrop,
a Boston idol, which created further social enmity
against him ; but though he felt his ostracism keenly, it
did not keep him from doing his duty as he saw it on
high moral issues of National importance.

He was elected to the Senate when he was forty,
after a stormy and bitter campaign.

52 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHARACTER

Sumner's greatest oratorical effort in the Senate
was delivered when he was in the prime of life, forty-
four years of age. He spoke for two days, the title of
the speech being "The Crime Against Kansas."
Rage seized the opposition Senators, and the conflagra-
tion of hate which Sumner's marvelous eloquence had
stirred spread to the ISTation. The day following the
debate, at the close of the session, Sumner was seated at
his desk on the floor of the Senate, writing. A stranger
appeared behind him and, before Sumner could rise,
made a savage attack upon him with a cane. Sumner
was carried bleeding and faint to the lobby, with in-
juries from which he never fully recovered. Though
elected to the Senate a second term, he was obliged
to visit Europe to recuperate his health. In the mean-
time, when he was fifty-five, he married the brilliant,
beautiful Alice Mosan Hooper. They were divorced
later by mutual consent. He died of heart disease,
from which he had been suffering some time, in his
sixty-third year. Neglected by the Senate, and totally
ignored by the Administration, he gradually faded out
of the world, having left behind him the glowing em-
bers of an intellectual force which brought him the
honors he deserved.

HORACE GREELEY

(1811-1872)

AMERICA'S PIONEER NEWSPAPER
GENIUS

HORACE GREELEY

(1811-1872)

AMERICA'S PIONEER NEWSPAPER
GENIUS

THE farmhouse wliere the Greeleys first lived was
in New Hampshire. It was a most attractive
place for the children of the neighborhood be-
cause they could always go there on dark winter evenings
and enjoy themselves. The only light in the big room
came from the fire, because candles were too expen-
sive. It was heaped high with pine knots that cracked
and flared up so that any one could read by it. There
by the fireside was usually to be found the smartest boy
in the village, Horace Greeley, the boy to whom other
children often went for help with their lessons.

And round the old-fashioned hearthstone the children
would gather, while Mrs. Greeley told them stories
or sang the songs they knew and loved to hear.
She was always ready for a romp with them and
laughed as happily as they did. Horace, whose hair
was flaxen and whose skin was fair as a girPs, settled
himself on these evenings, as on most other evenings,
in a corner close to the fire, reading a book. They
might pull him out of his corner by the leg, or hide
his book — as they often did — to make him play with
them, but he would never get angry. He would laugh

55

56 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

quietly, shake his head, find his book and go back to
his corner where he could go on reading. Most of the
older people used to wonder that he never grew tired of
reading. But he never did. He got the habit very
early in life.)

He learned his alphabet from a book when he was
two years old ; at four he began to read the Bible. By
the time he was seven or eight he had read the "Ara-
bian I^Tights" and at eleven years of age he had read all
of Shakespeare's works. There was an old retired sea-
captain, who lived on a farm near by, who used to lend
him books. He always greeted Horace with some
question about what he had read.

''Well, Horace, what's the capital of Turkey?" he
would ask him, or, "What's the biggest river in Amer-
ica ?" and Horace never made a mistake in his answers.

In school he used to sit on one leg, the other dan-
gling idly, indifferent, just as if the teacher's questions
were too easy for him. He took pleasure in listen-
ing to what the other children said at recitation, and
once he was so surprised at a mistake one of them
made, that he said out loud, "What a fool !" and then
turned crimson with shame. The children all liked
him so much that they only laughed, and so did the
teacher.

Although his father was only a poor farmer, Horace
never complained because he couldn't wear fine clothes
and have plenty of spending money. If he thought
about such things at all, as other children did, he showed
no sign of doing so. All his life, even when he be-
came a candidate for the Presidency of the United

HORACE GREELEY 57

States, he never had time to think about his clothes.
His mind was too occupied learning about things that
were much more important ; so that when he was four-
teen years old his teacher told his father that there was
no use to send Horace to school any more because he
knew as much as the teacher. Instead of boasting about
it; he was worried to know how he was going to get new
books to read at home.

He found a way, as he did years later, when he be-
came a man and helped the Nation solve the great dif-
ficulties of the Civil War and aided in the reconstruction
of the States. He went hunting for bees. He used to go
bee-hunting so that he could find the tree where the
bees had all the honey stored away. Then he would
sell the honey, and with that money he bought new
books from the peddler who came around in a wagon.
Little Horace was always a good customer for the
book-peddler. He bought the best books he could get —
books of poetry, romance, history. And he was very
fond of newspapers. ; In his own quiet way, he was
always hunting for knowledge and giving it out to
those who didn't have it.

Of course, he was an unusual boy, because he was
always reading, always talking about what he read, |
even when he was "chopping wood or hoeing potatoes, i
Horace Greeley was destined to be the great teacher he
became, because he spent his childhood reading about
what had happened in the world beyond the little
farmhouse at Westhaven in Vermont; and he formed
his own ideas of what was going to happen, from the
newspapers. Twenty years later, when he became a

58 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHARACTER

great editor, he was able to tell what had happened in
politics in his own country when he was a child.

Aside from the difficulty his family had to drag him
away from the books which he always had in his hand
when there were any chores to do, he was a gentle, ami-
able, affectionate boy. Every one liked him, for he
never got angry. At school he was always chosen as
the peacemaker for fights between other boys, and he was
so far ahead of them in their studies that he was always
willing to help boys older than himself with their
lessons.

He was a sickly boy, often confined to the house by
illness, so that even the sight of rain through the win-
dows would make him shiver. This delicacy was not
improved by the exposure of driving the horse plow,
or hoeing, or driving oxen which, as the son of a
poor farmer, he had to do. He was intensely practical,
and based the reasons for everything on the principle
that two and two make four.

The first book he ever owned was the "Columbian
Orator," a selection of recitations, which he declared
later added nothing to his knowledge or oratory. Be-
cause of ill health he couldn't join the rough games
of his schoolmates. He became an expert in checkers.
In anything that exercised his mind in strategyor logic
he excelled.

Years later, in 1872, when he was past sixty, he paid
a tribute to the little red schoolhouse, in his letter of
acceptance of the nomination for President of the
United States.

"I have a profound regard for the people of that J^ew

HORACE GREELEY 59

England wherein I was born," he wrote, ^4n whose com-
mon schools I was tanght. I rank no other people
above them in intelligence^ capacity and moral worth."

His mother, having lost one child, was especially
tender and careful of Horace and encouraged him in
his childhood love of books. So he spent a great deal
of time sitting at his mother's knee while she sat spin-
ning at her ^'little wheel." She would have the book
open on her lap, and so he took his daily lessons. In
this way he learned to read, sideways or even when
the book was upside down, which added to his reputa-
tion for learning in the neighborhood, though he him-
self did not think it very wonderful.

The first great sorrow of his life was his parting with
a young man who was his school teacher. He was one
of the new sort of teachers who never used a rod but
governed by appealing to the better impulses of the pu-
pils. When he left, there was a festival held in the
little schoolhouse, at which the parents attended and
every one ^^partook of cider and doughnuts."

To a boy as keen and mentally alert as Horace, the
period in his childhood, especially in the rural districts,
was exciting. It was only thirty years after the Rev-
olution, when the freedom of the people in the colo-
nies was growing to the great National unity of to-
day. There were "crisis" and "fight" in the air, still.
The prejudices and hatreds of the Revolution lingered.
The matrons of the neighborhood, when they gathered
around the open fire in the evening for social pleasure,
used to talk and sing. Dancing was not so popular as
singing. It was a period of ballads. These ballads

60 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

were the Revolutionary songs^ often love ditties such
as ^'Cruel Barbara Allen" or a less romantic song of
over fifty verses called 'American Taxation." Mrs.
Greeley's favorite ballads, which she sang with much
spirit to Horace, were stirring songs, such as ^'Boyne
Water," ''The Taking of Quebec," and "Wearing of
the Green," which dated from 1798. These reflections
of the ISTational spirit naturally turned his mind to
subjects that were puzzling maturer minds, and he
found himself further advanced in general information
than most children.

Admitting that he read a great deal as a boy, he re-
gretted that he had been unable to find a book that
dealt with agriculture and the natural sciences. While
enduring the trials of practical farming, he would have
liked to have some definite information in books or from
periodicals of advice. , There were none to be had in
those days.

" "I know I had the stuff in me for an efficient and
successful farmer,'' he said, "but such training as I
had at home would never have brought it out."

His ambitions resented failure in any effort of his
life. He saw, when he was thirteen, that there was no
future for him in farming ; and when he became a great
National figure, he confessed the secret of his
entire neglect to pursue his father's career as a
farmer. "The moral of my own experience," he said,
"is that our fathers' sons escape from their fathers' call-
ing whenever they can, because it is made a mindless,
monotonous drudgery instead of an ennobling, liberal-
izing, intellectual pursuit." Long afterwards it became

HORACE GREELEY 61

so and Horace Greelej admitted the improvement, but
in 1825 or thereabouts it was a life he wanted to escape
from, and did.

^ He had devoured newspapers in boyhood and there-
fore, as he approached manhood, his natural ambition
was to enter a printing office, to become a journalist,
an editor, a publisher. The beginning of his actual
career happened when he was thirteen years old and
was apprenticed to the printing office of the Northern
Spectator, a small country newspaper published in
East Poultney^ Vermont.

The separation from his home this involved was diffi-
cult for him. Up to the last he maintained a stolid
air of indifference, but the morning he stood in front
of the old farmhouse to bid his parents and his broth-
ers and sisters good-by, he wa? tempted not to go.
During the long walk to East Poultney, eleven miles,
he had to force himself not to turn back. This was
the boy's first great trial and he was thankful, in after
years, that he kept going straight ahead, once he had
started.

Horace Greeley never considered the books he read
when a boy as the foundation of his success. His ad-
vice to the young generation of his own period was
this:

"To the youth who asks, 'How shall I obtain an edu-
cation V I would answer, 'Learn a trade of a good mas-
ter.' '^P He never favored a college course for boys.

At the end of this four years' apprenticeship he went
to visit his parents who had moved to a new farm which
his father had bought in Erie County, Pennsylvania.

62 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

He had come to East Poiiltney a youthful but confirmed
politician of that period when John Quincy Adams was
President; Calhoun, Vice-President; and Henry Clay,
Secretary of State. He left it with a greater ambition
for himself, a. definite determination that 'New York
was the only place where he could begin such a career.
He was in his twentieth year. As a tribute of the re-
spect and affection in which he was held by his associates
in East Poultney, as he stood on the porch of the little
house where he had boarded so long, he was presented
with a cast-off brown overcoat (the first overcoat he ever
owned) and a pocket Bible.

In manhood Horace Greeley regretted that railroads
had ^'killed pedestrianism." He himself could walk
all day, and found it conducive to meditation. , His
father could cover over fifty miles a day, and Horace
himself recalled with pride that he had once walked
forty miles at a stretch. Walking was a necessity ol
the times when he was young. He often spoke of walk-
ing as one of the '^cheap and healthful luxuries of
life." He never approved of camping parties but ad-
vised solitary ramblings in the country. A two-or-
three-hundred-mile walk in the calm, clear air of Oc-
tober, alone, was one of Horace Greeley's favorite means
to health. ''Swing your pack and step off entirely
alone," he advised.

From his father's home in Erie County, Pennsyl-
vania, he went straight to New York. He had a total
capital of ten dollars, a stick, and a few clothes wrapped
in a red bandanna handkerchief hanging from it. He
himself estimated that he was worth, clothes and all,

HORACE GEEELEY 63

about eleven dollars. He knew no one, had no friends,
and he was in Xew York with personal appearances
much against him.

His first plan, of course, was to find a place to live.
He had landed at the Battery and walking uptown
he saw, at the corner of Broad Street and Wall Street,
a tavern. He entered the barroom, and asked the
price of board.

^'I guess we're too high for you," said the barkeeper,
giving Horace a brief glance.

^ Well, how much a week do you charge ?" asked the
odd figure in the little, whining voice peculiar to
him.

"Six dollars," was the reply.

"Yes, that's more than I can afford," and Horace
laughed meekly at the temerity of his mistake. He
finally found a boarding house on the water front of
the IN'orth Eiver near Washington Market, run by an
Irishman, M'Gorlick. For a week he visited the prin-
ters and newspaper printing shops without success. On
Sunday he heard from a fellow boarder of a job at West's
pressroom at 85 Chatham Street. Horace was on the
front steps at 5.30 Monday morning. About 6.30 he
was joined on the steps by one of the workmen who,
being a Vermonter, agreed to help Horace. In the
printing shop, while waiting for the foreman^ Horace
Greeley's appearance excited much laughter and satir-
ical conmaent, but he seemed indifferent to it all.
Finally he was put to work. About an hour later,
Mr. West, the boss, came in and spied the strange,
grotesque figure at once.

64 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHAEACTER

"Did you hire that fool ?" he asked the foreman.
~^^Yes, he's the best I could get/' replied the fore-
man.

"Well," said the boss, "for God's sake pay him off to-
night and let him go."

His work was so good that at the end of the day
they were glad to retain him, and for months he worked
on the Testament. In this office he was nicknamed the
"Ghost."' However, he could talk and work at the
typecase too, and the others soon found that he was
better informed than they were and listened to him
with respect. It was during his employment in Chat-
ham Street that Horace bought his first store clothes
from a secondhand shop and gave his fellow work-
men a treat to see him in black broadcloth and a
beaver hat, both of which faded and crumpled in two
weeks.

His acquaintance with the New Yorker of the '20s
was of gTcat use to him later, for he moved into a board-
ing house on the corner of Duane and Chatham Streets
and there met some youths who got him into the extrav-
agant habit of dining out in a restaurant on Sunday,
a novelty in those days. Dining downtown was a new
institution. Horace Greeley and his friends patronized
a place called the "Sixpenny Dining Saloon," on Beek-
man Street, a place much talked of in 1831. After
attending the Universalist Church on Orchard Street,
Horace and his friends dined downtown. The cost of
the dinner was one shilling.

So Horace Greeley began humbly his great career
in IN^ew York. He never overcame a certain awkward-

HORACE GREELEY 65

ness of figure, a gaunt pallor, a timidity of manner
that made most people undervalue his power.

On 'New Year's Day, 1832, after doing odd jobs in
various printing offices, he secured employment in the
attic ofiice where William T. Porter printed The Spirit
of the Times. On May 5 appeared the first article
written by Greeley to be published in ISTew York,
under the nom de plume of '^Timothy Wiggins.'^ The
outstandins; characteristics of Horace Greelev as a
printer were industry, fearlessness of opiniony and in-
dependence of feeling. The^e were the dominant fea-
tures of the New York Tribune which he later founded.
This was not his first editorial venture, however.

In partnership with Francis Story, a printer, with
a total capital of less than $150, Horace Greeley pub-
lished the first cheap-priced daily newspaper in America
— The Post: It was intended to be a penny paper,
but sold for more. It made its appearance from
the little publishing office at 54 Liberty Street on
January 1st, 1833, in a snowstorm that developed into
a blizzard and crippled the enthusiasm of the boys who
had been trained to be the first newsboys in Ameri-
can history. It was too cold to carry The Post
around, and it made only a slight impression although
over a hundred subscribers were served. The venture
proved a failure, as Greeley predicted it would be, in-
sisting that the only possible price to charge for a
daily newspaper was two cents.

Before he wa5 twenty-five years old, Horace Greeley
issued The New Yorker which he himself described
as "si large, fair, and cheap weekly folio, devoted

66 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

mainly to current literature^ but giving weekly a digest
of news and political intelligence." In seven years
the young editor increased the circulation from a dozen
subscribers to nine thousand.

Two years after its first publication, Horace Greeley
married and a year later, 1837, practically bankrupt
by the commercial slump of that year, he went through a
period of torment.

"I would rather be a convict in a State prison, a
slave in a rice-swamp, than to pass through life under
the horror of debt," he wrote^ remembering this period
^of depression.

., It was in this year that Martin Van Buren was in-
augurated President. Greeley's work as editor of
The New Yorker had brought him into political life
and he was offered a nomination in the City Assembly
but declined it. By degrees, however, the name of
Horace Greeley became famous as a man of individual
courage and sound views of National liberty. After
fifteen years of valuable experience in making news-
papers he issued the monument to his intellectual su-
premacy, which "Still survives long after him — the
Neiv York Tribune. He was proud of the association
with him in the Tribune of Henry J. Raymond, who
accepted his offer to hire him ^'at eight dollars a week,"
until he could do better.

Greeley was a man who refused to compromise his
views. - He has confessed his impulsive shifting of con-
victions by stating that it never interfered with the suc-
cess of the newspaper.

At the end of his life he summed it up in the clear.

HORACE GREELEY 67

exact, fearless vision that he demonstrated even as a boy.

^Tame is vapor, popularity an accident, riches take
wings ; the^oniy earthly certainty is oblivion ; . . . and
yet I cherish the hope that the journal I projected yes-
terday will live and flourish long after I shall have
mouldered. ..."

Greeley's political life was stormy. He served three
months in Congress, was nominated for President, and
defeated. His opposition to slavery in the brilliant
editorial conduct of the Tribune was in support of
President Lincoln. He was a protectionist, which, he
admitted towards the end of his life, was one of his
ideals in boyhood.

^'From early boyhood I sat at the feet of champions
of this doctrine," he said.

His attitude tawards the great political and Na-
tional issues that confronted him in later life was dis-
passionate. This analytical habit of mind was estab-
lished in childhood, for he says, discussing his political
convictions, ^The arguments which combated (protec-
tion) seemed to me far stronger than those they ad-
vanced."

Horace Greeley's advice to the ambitious young man ^
becomes a suitable, if brief, lesson of his own hara
experience. \j

^^The best business you can go into," he said, "you
will find on your father's farm or in his workshop. If
you have no family or friends to aid you, and no pros-
pect open to you there. Go West^ and then build up
a home and fortune. But dream not of getting sud-
denly rich by speculation, rapidly by trade, or anyhow ,

68 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

by a profession. . . . Above all be neither afraid nor
ashamed of honest industry, and if you catch yourself
fancying an}i;hing more respectable than this, be
asharaed of it to the last day of your life."

WENDELL PHILLIPS

(1811-1879)

THE SILVER-TONGUED ABOLITIONIST

^^St

■■^^tyK

WENDELL PHILLIPS

(1811-1879)

THE SILVEE-TONGUED ABOLITIONIST

A TALL, athletic, aristocratic youth was comfort-
ably sprawled out on a sofa, reading. It was
early in October. His study-window was open
but the usual noises of the street did not disturb him.
To have looked at him then, no one would have sus-
pected that he was contemplating a life of sacrifice, of
danger, of heroic devotion in support of the negro race.
Every one who counted for anything in Boston, in those
remarkably brilliant days of its intellectual awakening,
knew this young man. He was extremely good looking,
always dressed in the best of style, and being intelligent,
well informed above the average, held a popular and
leading position among the younger set '^on the Hill,'^
in Boston. His father had been the first Mayor of
Boston, and he himself had been graduated from Har-
vard, and was making a start as a lawyer.

The house in which he was born, on the corner of
Beacon and Walnut Streets^ was one of the mansions of
that period.

In 1834, when Boston was not such a big city, the
streets were probably less noisy than they are now,
and the trafiic, being entirely by horse-driven vehicles,

may not have been as loud as the confused blare of auto-

71

72 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

mobile whistles and horns one has become accustomed
to to-day. At any rate, there was nothing which dis-
tracted this young man from the book he was reading.
If he knew that a meeting of kind and courageous
ladies was to be held that afternoon in a hired hall to
pass resolutions of sympathy lamenting the abuses of
slavery, it had escaped his mind. He was not pro-
foundly interested in the tragic fate of the negro
slaves at that time, ^o one suspected that he had
anything but the usual impressions of his class, that
slavery was an inherited condition of the times, that
no gentleman of the Northern or Southern States could
question the right of any man to buy and sell negro
slaves. The Government had indorsed this right to its
citizens! There was a severe penalty in case a negro
slave escaped and was assisted in doing so by any other
slave-owner or by any other man at all. A few peo-
ple had dared, in the face of public opinion against
them, to express their views against what they consid-
ered an uncivilized system but those people were not
in the majority. It was a dangerous thing, in fact,
to talk anti-slavery arguments anywhere in Boston, any-
where in America, in 1834. If this fortunate young
scion of a Beacon Street family had any such notions
about the injustice of slavery as an institution, he had
shown no signs of them among his friends or his college
mates. In fact the whole tendency of any Harvard
graduate, at that time, was to accept slavery as a fixed
law of the land.

Suddenly, there was an unusual noise in the street.
The roar of men's angry voices, the scuffling of feet, the

WENDELL PHILLIPS 73

crash of glass, and a few words spoken louder than the
rest sounded as if some one in authority were trying
to tell the noisy crowd to be calm. He couldn't see
what was going on from the window so he hurried out
to find out what all the row was about.

What he saw stirred his fighting blood, of which he
had a generous store. A crowd had seized a man and
was pushing and mauling and beating him with sticks,
kicking him, with no apparent certainty of direction.
Judging by a rope they had thrown over his neck^ they
intended to hang him. While the narrow street be-
came more and more choked with the gathering crowd,
he noticed that many of them were acquaintances and
friends. It was not a mob of roughs, it was made up
of men, young and old, socially well known. He gath-
ered from the disjointed shouts, the names they were
hurling at the unfortunate man, that he was an aboli-
tionist, an anti-slavery speaker. He realized at once,
too, that he must be no ordinary street agitator to at-
tract this crowd of Boston gentlemen against him. He
saw the Mayor himself trying with gesture to stop
the progress of the crowd, but he did not hear him au-
thoritatively order it to disperse. His chief impres-
sion was that this disorderly conduct in the streets of
Boston, whatever the cause, was an unseemly incident.
There must have been a thousand men, wearing expen-
sive broadcloth, in that angry mob.

"What's the man's name ?" he asked.

"Garrison, the dirty abolitionist ; hanging is too good
for him," was the reply.

He knew who William Lloyd Garrison was, had read

74 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

copies of his famous emancipation journal, The Lib-
erator, knew that in the South it was denied the mails.
Joining the mob, pushing his way with them towards
the City Hall, his resentment at the odds against one
man broke forth. With great indignation he pushed
his way to the side of the Mayor, Mr. L^nnan, whom he
saw was doing nothing to command order; and spying
the Colonel of his militia regiment, the Suffolks, he said
to him:

''Colonel, why don't you call out the guards? Let's
offer our services to the Mayor, to restore order."

''Don't be a fool," said the Colonel. "Look around
you. The whole regiment is here, but not in uni-
form!"

The young man, heretofore absorbed in Greek and
Latin, in history and classics, in eulogies of brave men^
of heroic martyrs, suddenly realized that here was a
tragedy as horrible, an injustice as flagrant, as any he
had read of in his studies.

The outrage against a defenseless man was upper-
most in his mind, at first, and then as his keenly trained
intelligence sifted the cause, penetrated the underly-
ing reasons of such mob violence, he pledged himself
to the great issues of anti-slavery^ as in a far less vigor-
ous way his old friend and classmate, Charles Sumner,
did later in the Senate; that which the martyr of the
Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, finally achieved in his
Emancipation Act.

This incident was the beginning in history of Wendell
Phillips, who, when he was a young man, at twenty-
four years of age, could find no greater purpose in

WENDELL PHILLIPS 75

life than to convert his fellow-men to his own deep, pas-
sionate, unswerving acknowledgment that all men are
free and equal.

At college he had given indications in debate of ex-
ceptional gifts in public speaking, w^hich were com-
mended in him. It was expected that this talent w^ould
go far in making his success in the courts. No one ap-
parently had any suspicion that deep in the character
of this fashionable young man of wealth and genius
there lay the elements of a reformer. His training at
home had been Spartan, in the sense that every one in
the household had been brought up to the Puritan gos-
pel of mutual aid and divison of labor. Equality had
been the ambition of the Colonials, and it had become
the gospel of the Constitution. The assault on Garrison
in the streets of Boston was the beginning of what was
termed the '^revolutionary" impulses of Wendell Phil-
lips. It has been said there was a still deeper influence
which came almost simultaneously into his life, the in-
fluence which, inspired by romance and love, fastened
him irredeemably to the career he adopted. This was
his meeting with Anne Terry Greene, the daughter
of a wealthy shipping merchant of Boston, whom he
married. She, too, was at heart an abolitionist, and
after her marriage she became an ardent friend of all
anti-slavery movements and a philanthropic aid to
Lloyd Garrison in his purposes. Charles Sumner was
to have gone with Phillips when he met Miss Greene
for the first time, to escort her and a girl friend on a
stagecoach party. Young Sumner had been invited to
occupy the attention of the friend, while Phillips

76 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHABACTER

dev^oted his to his future wife. Sumner didn't go, be-
cause of a snowstorm. ^'I wouldn't go for a stage ride
with any woman on a day like this," he said, and went
back to bed. Phillips, however, was not so easily di-
verted from a plan he had made. He had been warned
that she was ^'the cleverest, loveliest, most brilliant
young woman" he could want to know, and that he must
guard himself against being "talked into the ^sin of ab-
olition,' before suspecting what she was about."

They were married when Phillips was twenty-six, in
the critical year of his life when he delivered his first
public speech in Faneuil Hall in Boston. He always
said after they were married, "My wife made an out-
and-out abolitionist of me ; and she always preceded
me in the adoption of the various courses I have ad-
vocated." In fact it was a condition of her acceptance
of the young man, that he should be the friend of anti-
slavery. It was a risk to put such a condition to Wen-
dell Phillips, or to any of the young men in his own set,
but he pledged himself to the conversion, for he
confessed in later years that he held up his hand and
declared to her in the nature of an oath^ ^^^^J life shall
attest the sincerity of my conversion."

It was during his engagement that he met Garrison.
They were perhaps the two foremost influences, prior
to the Civil War, in urging the freedom of the slaves.
Garrison had compelling attractions for Phillips.
He admired the courage with which this man had
fought his way up without education, money, or friends ;
whereas he himself had been fortunate in possessing all
these requirements of a leader.

WENDELL PHILLIPS 77

"Wendell Phillips saw also, of course, that he was
hazarding all these social values in his own life. His
fortune and his friends, that had made life so full of
promise and success to him, must he sacrificed. The
strength of character which ultimately made of him one
of the great emancipators of the negro was due to his
faith in divine providence and his profound attachment
to his wife. Por many years, from shortly after their
marriage, Mrs. Phillips was an invalid, confined to her
room, and during that time he grew old in sacrifices of
service and attention. It is said she never grew old but
retained the charm and impulses of her girlhood through
trying years of illness.

Having cast aside his worldly career, in the open
avowal of his pledge to the cause of anti-slavery, Wen-
dell Phillips found himself compelled to exert all the
natural powers of eloquence and the fighting powers of
courage to overcome the hatred and mob violence that
menaced his life as an abolitionist. He consecrated
himself to the cause much earlier in life than Sumner
did, and with greater fearlessness of action. His ideal-
ism was not merely a matter of fine dreams, it was the
active, dangerous occupation of facing angry, vicious
mobs and controlling them with the skill of oratory, the
gift of voice and gesture. Wendell Phillips might have
made a great actor. As a child he used to play at pre-
tending he was one, dressed up in clothes found in the
attic, giving performances with his playmates to the
ambient air. His father once found him expounding a
sermon, standing on a chair and talking to the empty
chairs in front of him.

78 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

"Isn't that rather hard on you?" his father asked
him, amused.

"NOy but it's rather hard on the chairs/' said the
child whimsically.

His first plunge from the safety of his previous life
in Boston into the turbulent current of what his friends
regarded as the '^dirty water of abolition" was made in
a speech at a meeting of the much threatened, often
abused Anti-Slavery Society held in Lynn, Mass. It
was only a few months before his marriage. He was
immediately recognized as a great acquisition to the
cause and acclaimed as an orator.

A year later he found himself standing in the crowd
at Faneuil Hall, during a Nation's meeting of the aboli-
tionists. Already penal legislation had been urged,
with the punishment of hanging for agitators of anti-
slavery. There were other great men, however, who, in
the interest of maintaining a spirit of universal free-
dom in the country, appeared on the platform at these
meetings. Dr. Channing was one of these and spoke.
The preliminary addresses were approaching resolu-
tions condemning mob organizations in the streets when
James T. Austin, the Attorney-General of State,
jumped up and from his place in the gallery attacked
the motives of the meeting and so successfully stirred
the opposition in the hall that a mob outbreak was
imminent.

Phillips, standing with the crowd, said that some
one ought to answer the Attorney-General, and he him-
self was urged to do it by a man near him.

"I will, if you will help me to the platform," he re-

WENDELL PHILLIPS 79

plied. But he didn't reach it. He stood up on a
stool and began at once to speak without introduction.
An effort was made to stop him but he stood his
ground, appealing to the sense of justice and fair-play.
Without time to consider what he should say in reply
to an unexpected attack, he completely reversed the
stampede intended for that meeting and restored the
better sense of the crowd. It was a great triumph of
oratory and self-command, which happened frequently
in the public campaign Wendell Phillips led so many
years. It was the comments in the press, the sensa-
tional arguments this speech aroused, that notified his
former friends in Boston that he had chosen a career of
dangerous agitation and reform.

These meetings, held in winter, were warmed only
by the heated eloquence of the speakers, as the follow-
ing reporter's note, published at that time, reveals :

^W^hen it is considered that the reporter was taking
notes in a room without fire or seats, and that the
thermometer Avas below zero, that his paper was full,
and all pencils he could borrow used up, he humbly
begs to be forgiven for the remainder of the remarks,"
— made after the sixth speaker had been heard.

In his speeches, which were always extemporaneous,
Wendell Phillips had extraordinary magnetic power
over the mob spirit. Once when he was facing an infu-
riated mob, in New York, one of the leaders cut a cur-
tain rope and shouted that they would hang him.

^'Oh ! wait a minute," said Phillips, smiling, ''till I
tell you this story."

His bravery was supremely heroic. General Miles

80 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

was once asked what was the bravest thing he ever saw.
The general replied that it was the speech delivered by
Wendell Phillips in the Boston Music Hall, to a mob
of two thousand people howling for his blood. At the
end of the speech Wendell Phillips left the hall, unmo-
lested, and went home.

The best years of his life were given to the cause
of unconditional abolition. He was a preacher, a cru-
sader against a National evil, a young man who dared
anything to stir the torpid indifference of Americans
to the monstrous features of slavery. By unrestrained
speech he aroused the people, at the risk of his own life.
His gift was that of an orator, his eloquence that of
an inspired reformer. While he saw that his country
declared for freedom, he also saw that there were in-
justice, inhumanit}^. National inconsistencies.

Wendell Phillips was the organizer of the Boston
Anti-Slavery Society. He opposed the annexation of
Texas; he openly deplored Kossuth's silence about
slavery; he opened the public schools to colored chil-
dren; he defended John Brown at Harpers Ferry; he
recommended "ballots instead of bullets," in anti-
slavery conflict ; he supported Lincoln — in fact, he
created public opinion all his life. He declined several
offers to run for Congress in later years, but contin-
ued, a friendly, benevolent, and philanthropic man, to
criticise National issues and famous men to the last.

EDWARD EVERETT HALE

(1822-1909)

PREACHER, ORGANIZER, AND
AUTHOR

From " The Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale," by Edward Everett
Hale, Jr., published by Little. Brown & Company

EDWARD E\ERETT HALE

THS J<£^ ^^^^
P8BLIC LIBRARY

ASTOK, L^^^^_^.,

EDWARD EVERETT HALE

(1822-1909)

PEEACHER, ORGANIZER, AND
AUTHOR

' ' "T T^^ Edward gone to school ?" asked Mr. Nathan
I I Hale, his father, one morning in November in
the year 1827.

''Goodness, yes, — why do you ask V^ said his mother,
looking very prim, and slender, and sweet in her simple
Quaker gray dress.

^'Nothing. Only Edward seems to be growing pretty
fast, haven't you noticed ?" his father said as he smiled.

^'Edward's a little like me, I think," said his mother.

''Yes, it must be so. What the boy said to me yes-
terday was certainly not like me. He'll never make a
teacher."

"What was it he said ?" the mother asked.

"Well, when I asked him how his school was getting
along, he looked up at me in that way he has, and he
said, 'Well, Father, I may as well tell you first as last,
that school is a bore.' I remonstrated with him; told
him that was not the way to feel about an education,
and he said, 'Oh ! I don't hate school so much, I just
dislike it, it's a necessary nuisance.' "

Edward's mother laughed a little as she went back
into the kitchen, while her husband put on his hat and

83

84 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHAEACTER

started for the office of the Boston Daily Advertiser,
which he owned.

Edward was then about six years old and his ideas
about education at that age may not be important, but,
since he became one of the great writers and preachers
of the world, it is evident that his character developed
early in his life. I^ever, when he grew up, and years
and years afterwards recalled his school days, did he
alter his opinion of school.

'^1 disliked it, as I disliked all schools,'' he said, ^'but
here again I regarded the whole arrangement as one of
those necessary nuisances which society imposed on the
.individual, and which the individual would be foolish
to quarrel with when he didn't have it in his power
to abolish it."

Strangely enough, he never thought that those ten or
twelve years he spent going to school did him much
good. He acknowledged only one advantage, and that
was what he learned in declamation. He hated to re-
cite in class, as many boys do, and he never got a good
mark for public speaking in school or college, but he ad-
mitted that was the most useful thing he learned.

^The exercise of declamation," he wrote in after
years, ^'did what it was meant to do, that is, it taught
us not to be afraid of an audience."

He was a boy in advance of his years, for he entered
Harvard at the age of thirteen. But education at school
and college was not the chief value that Edward Everett
Hale cherished most of all in his memory. The broad,
big-hearted sympathy with every human phase of life
was fastened on him by the atmosphere of his home.

EDWARD EVERETT HALE 85

His father and mother had very much the same impres-
sions as he had of schools and colleges, and they made
every effort to allow every one in the family the utmost
freedom of opinion. It was a home where every one had
an equal right with the other, and this fine strength of
individual liberty of thought and action made the home
a natural center and refuge. It was the real center of
the boy's character w^hich later became the distinguished
force it will always be in the history of N^ew England.
There were many children, eight in all, and they all
lived their own lives in that delightful home in Boston.
They were not petted, or scolded, or argued with, but
encouraged to occupy themselves just as they wished.
They were especially urged to bring their friends home
with them. Playthings were not put in the nursery, but
Edward, having a mechanical turn of mind, when he
was a boy was given materials from which he could
manufacture toy locomotives. There were all sorts of
materials prepared for boys at that time, with which
they could build things for themselves. With his elder
brother Xathan, he was fond of making experiments in
chemistry, following such formulas as were given them
in juvenile magazines. Best of all, however, they liked
to go to their father's printing office and learn to set
type. I^athan, being the older boy, was the leader.
Like Robinson Crusoe, he was always in search of cur-
ious adventure, and Edward was inseparable from him
as Crusoe's good man, Friday. Then there were church
and Sunday School on Sunday. In those days, in Bos-
ton, at least, children were expected to learn a great deal
about the Scriptures. It was a serious study.

86 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

^Tully one half of the important instruction which I
now have with regard to the Scriptural history of man-
kind was acquired in the Brattle Street Sunday School,
before I was thirteen/' wrote Edward Everett Hale after
he became a minister himself.

Besides church and house gatherings, there was danc-
ing school, which led to evening parties when the chil-
dren grew old enough to stay up later than nine o'clock.
And there were lectures to go to in the evening, as
popular in Boston then in 1830 as the movies are now.

Literary ambitions were uppermost in Edward's mind
as a boy, and he did a great deal of writing then in
blank-books carefully ruled so that the writing would
keep on straight lines. His father being the publisher
and editor of the Daily Advertiser, the boys drifted
naturally into a fancy for journalism and a knowledge
of the printing business. The boys could set type in
their teens. They wrote and printed books and a news-
paper for themselves. They even started a library of
their own books, which they called the Franklin Circu-
lating Library. The books were very small, really only
booklets three or four inches square. These books con-
tained versions of fairy stories. Edward published in
this way a poem about ^^Jack and the Beanstalk" writ-
ten for him by his mother. One of the home news-
papers, a little sheet only four by four inches, was called
The Fly.

He entered Harvard at thirteen because his father be-
lieved in going to college as soon as possible. Both the
boy's uncles having gone to Harvard when they were
younger, Edward was merely fulfilling the traditions of

EDWAED EVERETT HALE 87

his family. Also, his older brother, to whom he was
deeply attached, had been in Harvard a year and Ed-
ward missed him very much. In college, the brothers
occupied the same room. This separated him from his
Freshman classmates, because he lived with a Sopho-
more. He was not happy at Harvard, however.

^'I am always counting the weeks to vacation," he
wrote later, '^the first four weeks always seemed to me
interminable."

His first day at college was one of ^^deadly homesick-
ness." Still he learned his classics and modern lan-
guages at Harvard, which stayed with him through his
long life. He was a good cricket player and in winter
was always getting up sleighing parties. He made some
mark at Harvard in literature, being the class poet at
his graduation, and was graduated second on the list.
Of this poem he wrote in his diary, immediately after
it was finished :

"It has convinced me of what I knew perfectly well
before, that I am not, nor ever was, a poet or have I ever
had the least claim to the title." Still, the literary side
of the man was always predominant. It came chiefly
from his mother, whose brother, Alexander Everett, was
editor of the North American Bevieiu.

After his graduation Edward began his studies for the
ministry, at the request of his mother, and lived in the
old home in Boston, a place frequented by the younger
literary men of the time, notably James Russell Lowell,
who had been graduated from Harvard a year before.

Economy of time became a habit. He found that he
had begun many books that he never finished, so he made

88 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHABACTER

a rule never to allow himself more than five books to
read at a time. He divided them into "Professional, 2 ;
— Informative, 1 ; — Languages, 1 ; — Light reading,
1." He tried hard to maintain this schedule but it was
often interrupted.

"It seems melancholy to think how my time is an-
nihilated by those abominable diversions called evening
parties," he writes in his diary.

He spent his evenings conscientiously reading and re-
sented the interference of society. Yet his was one of
the representative families, the bluest of blue blood.
His uncle, his mother's brother, after being Governor of
Massachusetts, was American Minister to England.

Six or seven years followed the graduation from Har-
vard, with no other progress towards the ministry than
reading much, traveling, and ample leisure for concerts
and dances. And yet, ISTew England during this time
was stirred up by the new theories of Ealph Waldo
Emerson, which came into being in America at the same
time as the doctrines of Carlyle and Goethe. These in-
tellectual events young Hale viewed without interest, and
Emerson he did not like at all. He said after hearing
Emerson the first time, "It was not very good but very
transcendental.'' Later he wrote in his diary, "Mr. Em-
erson's stock of startling phrases concerning soul, mind,
etc., is getting exhausted, and I think his reputation
will fall accordingly."

In everything young Hale read, after he left college,
he always kept in view certain definite impressions he
had formed on religion. Though it was his purpose
eventually to be a minister, these years immediately

EDWARD EVERETT HALE 89

after college were spent in absorbing all kinds of liter-
ature rather than in reading up for a special denom-
ination of religious feeling. He kept a diary which
faithfully shows the practical strain of his mind.
There is less record of what he did or thought than there
is of what books he read and lectures he heard. His
opinions, which are criticisms, reveal that he read with
a keen sight on the value of the matter rather than on
the fame of the author. His interest in politics was
chiefly the reflection of his father's impressions, who,
being the editor of the Daily Advertiser, was naturally
occupied with them. Of course, during these "reading
years," he wrote articles for his father's newspaper,
chiefly descriptions of trips he made. His father being
President of the Boston and Worcester Railroad, travel-
ing was possible on passes. Theology, however, oc-
cupied most of his thoughts.

When he was away from home he made it a rule to
write his mother a letter every other day.

"I am fond of laying down a rule of one letter eveiy
other day to the family wanderers when I am at home,"
he wrote his mother once.

The Divinity School, of which he knew something, did
not please him. He objected to what he called the
"divinity drawl," a manner of delivery in preaching
which did not come up to his conceptions of the ideal in
preaching.

On his nineteenth birthday he writes in his diary this
unusual summing up of his own character :

"I am nineteen years old, and all day I have been
thinking more of the future than I often do. Another

90 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

year I shall have begun to devote myself to my profes-
sion, a profession the proper preparation for which I
think no one understands — I am sure I do not myself.
I shall be obliged to take the responsibility of preparing
myself for its solemn duties very much in my own way.
. . . God made me^ I believe, to be happy, and placed
me here that my powers might be developed and im-
proved and so fitted for a superior state of existence.
As for ambition I have less and less of the school-boy
stamp of it every day that I live."

The following year he preached his first sermon in a
church in Newark, N. J. His mother, writing of the
event, said:

^T feel as if there were something appalling almost
in one so young — twenty years — who was but the
other day an infant in my arms, standing forth in such
a position.'^

Writing about his experiences himself he said, "I am
satisfied that I embarked on the profession too young,
. . . for I feel younger and younger^ less and less ex-
perienced every day that I preach."

Gradually specific influences moulded the course of
his character. After being impressed by a sermon he
heard, he decided, "For myself then — I must set up
the study of Christ. For my action in the world I start
on this; that the world can and shall be made less
selfish."

He kept this resolution, developing it to the highest
force in his character.

"One does make a mistake in working too much for
the future," he gaid. "Use time as holy time ; but not

EDWARD EVERETT HALE 91

on tlie immense scale of beginning a series of operations
worth less than nothing if no to-morrow or no next
year comes from their completion.''

He became pastor of the Unitarian Church in Wor-
cester, Massachusetts, when he was twenty-four, and
there he developed the religious laws of his requirements
as a minister. These w^ere the direct outcome of his
broad, practical, sympathetic character. When he had
spent ten years in Worcester he was called to the South
Congregational Church in Boston w^here he remained
till he died.

Edward Everett Hale's supreme claim to the memory
of succeeding generations is the application of his char-
acter to the service of others. He organized his church
as a social factor, and was concerned not merely with
the people of his congregation, but with every one with
whom they came in contact. He was not satisfied with
merely giving the members of his congregation spiritual
counsel on Sundays, he had a personal guiding interest
in the activities of their lives. He established a repu-
tation of helpfulness outside his church as well. He
was always accessible to assist strangers in Boston who
had no social standing to bring to the community,
whether it consisted of getting work for them so that they
could live or giving them such associations as would
make their lives happier. Although he was himself an
individualist, he fully recognized that life was a thing
we all must share in common. His industry, his syste-
matic array of notebooks containing complete records
of his church organizations and the people in them, in
themselves representing an immense labor, were merely

92 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHABACTEB

the ordinary run of his duties as a minister. Besides
his sermons, he was a prolific author of poetry, short
stories^ essays, and magazine articles of all sorts. His
charity was a ceaseless drain on his strength also. Such
items as this reveal Mr. Hale's character :

^^George Brown comes out of prison next Monday. I
have promised to meet him there and see him to his
home." '

All his work was a personal application of his own
judgment and sympathy towards people, rather than
the institutional character of church work. Without
knowing it he exerted an individual power, believing he
was leading others to accomplish that which his own per-
sonality alone achieved. His energy was nothing less
than the bubbling enthusiasm in life, and people, and
books, that never deserted him.

After a trip to Europe when he was nearly forty, he
returned to his church in Boston to find the Civil War
imminent, with the election of Lincoln. He was an
abolitionist, an organizer of the Emigrant Aid Society
of ^ew England which planned to colonize Kansas free
lands for slaves. He plunged into the excitement and
passion of this epoch with great zeal. His name as a
broad-minded, humane, original-thinking minister had
spread^ and he was in great demand as a speaker and
writer on the E^ational issues of the war. Out of this
intensity of feeling came the story that became one of
the master]3ieces of short fiction, ^'The Man Without
A Country," which was as great an influence in stirring
feeling against slavery, as "Uncle Tom's Cabin." This
story spread the fame of the author both as a writer and

EDWARD EVERETT HALE 93

as a man of deep convictions which the iSTorth supported.
It was subsequently translated into many languages.
Magazines, in those days, did not print the author's name
on stories, so this little classic appeared under the signa-
ture of Frederick Ingham. He was an all-round man,
this fellow Ingham! He wrote many economical and
political articles. He could write anything a magazine
wanted, on any subject. The author describes ''Ing-
ham's" work in a private diary :

''If it were his duty to write verses, he wrote verses ;
to lay telegraph, he laid telegraph ; to fight slavers, he
fought slavers ; to preach sermons, he preached sermons ;
and he did one of these thing with just as much alacrity
as the other, the moral purpose entirely controlling such
mental aptness or physical habits as he could bring to
bear.''

On his seventy-fifth birthday^ Edward Everett Hale,
referring to a toast at a banquet, said of an editor, "He
pleased me by squarely recognizing the truth that I
considered literature in itself worthless and that my
literary work has always had an object."

That work was enormous. The list of his books
alone is over 150, and the list of articles, essays,
sermons, and other literary output has never been com-
pletely made. In his writing Edward Everett Hale
developed ideas and then encouraged their application
to practical events in daily life. His short story, "Ten
Times One is Ten," contains the principles that were
the underlying motif of his religious life — the gospel
pel of brotherhood. He "builded better than he knew,"
when he wrote this story. Its conception was in his

94 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

mind when he was thirty, though he never wrote it
till he was nearly sixty. The object of the story was
to show how one good life could inspire another. It
led to the spreading of the organization of the "Lend
a Hand" movement, societies all over the country
pledged to mutual helpfulness. The religion behind
these organizations was no more inspiring than the four
lines which defined its purposes. These were the mot-
toes of the "Lend a Hand'' Clubs :

"Look up and not down,
Look forward and not back,
Look out and not in,
Lend a hand!"

The first "Lend a Hand" Club was organized in N'ew
York among some street boys, to whom Miss Ella E.
Russell read the story. When other societies grew all
over the country they wrote to the author of the idea
for further inspiration. He always advised them this :

^^The less fuss and feathers the better. The idea
is that such a club should be made up of unselfish peo-
ple, who meet, not for ^mutual improvement,' but with
some definite plans for other people."

This was the purpose of his life. All his lectures,
his letters when a boy and a young man, his sermons,
his literature, enlisted that spirit of organizing with
definite plans to help other people. The "Lend a
Hand" idea was the crystallization of the spiritual
identity of Edward Everett Hale, the literary, philan-
thropic, religious leader of the nineteenth century. It
made him the pioneer in such outstanding Christian

EDWARD EVERETT HALE 95

movements as the Christian Endeavor Society, the Ep-
worth League, Young People's Religious Union, the
Girls' Eriendly, King's Daughters, and many others.

Towards the close of his life, he said in a short re-
view:

^^I have written many books, but I am not an author.
I am a parish minister. I don't care a snap of my
finger for the difference between Balzac and Daudet.
That is not important in my life. I do care about
the classes of men who migrate to this country."

LELAND STANFOED

(1824-1893)

GEEAT PIONEER OF THE WEST

Yi84

LELAND STANFORD

THV^ Wty r^RK
P¥BLIC LIBRARY

ASTO«, LENOX

A

LELAND STANFOED

(1824-1893)

GREAT PIONEER OF THE WEST

J

S the years accumulate between the living man

herewith remembered, who died in 1893, and
the memories of his life, the chief lesson of that
life becomes clear — foresight. That is the useful,
practical lesson to be learned from the career of Leland
Stanford. To some, he was a financier; to others, a
successful promoter; to others, that ever questionable
human being, a rich man. The deeper qualities of his
nature, the simplicity, modesty, sincerity and kindness
which many acts of his life show, are not widely as-
sociated with his name. In fact there exists no biog-
raphy of him, doubtless because he himself did not en-
courage the notion. His memory is reduced to a brief
sketch in the encyclopedia among men who have left
a mark that stretches into future generations.

There are three t-hings he accomplished, in the short
seventy years of his life, that explain his right to an
important place in the world's history, particularly in
American history.

First — He organized and built the Central Pacific
Railroad, so completing a connecting thread with the
Pacific and Atlantic.

Second — He exerted brilliant and loyal energies as
99

100 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

Governor of California, in 1861, to sustain Lincoln
and the Union.

Third — He built and gave to the country the Lelan'd
Stanford Jr. University, a gift inspired by the death
of his son when a boy of fifteen, mingled with a dom-
inating impulse of his life to contribute something use-
ful and practical to the world, for the future.

He was usually building something — for to-morrow.
What he had accumulated yesterday was only to
improve that purpose. His impulse was — :,foresi^t.
'Not a spectacular man, for although he became ex-
tremely wealthy, and was twice elected to the United
States Senate, he made no impressive speeches, adorned
no heroic event. A slow-thinking, deliberate, consci-
entious, plain sort of man all through, and yet with
a dynamic force in him that swayed other men. His
chief sport was horse racing. He owned some famous
beauties of the track, of his day. A man's man in
every sense of the word, — and a self-made man in
the sense that he became one of the 'Argonauts" of
California who accumulated stupendous fortunes in the
West of the gold-fever period. It was not a sudden
mining speculation, as it was with so many adventurers
in the West during that gold excitement, that brought
him wealth. He didn't strike ore in great quantities
overnight, as some others did. There were no miracles
of chance that might add a touch of picturesque
adventure to his life. Leland Stanford was a man
of quiet, slow, careful methods, a business^ man.
He had an imagination that foresaw many things, and
he encouraged these visions of the future, but he kept

LELAND STANFORD 101

them harnessed to practical, sane uses. His imagina-
tive faculties were not indulgences, thej were the sup-
ports of his practical plans.

The character of the man may be the result of boy-
hood environment, or may not be. There are many
who claim that the impressionable years of a boy's life
fasten deep upon the impulses and habits of manhood.
Leland Stanford was born on a farm in the fertile hills
of Central 'New York, about eight miles from Albany.
The small settlement, — small at that time in 1824 —
was called Watervliet. He always claimed chiefly
English ancestry, though there was a decided Irish
mixture from his father's side of the family. His
mother was of old Puritan, New England stock closely
related to the direct descendants of the early '^May-
flower" colonists in Massachusetts.

Josiah Stanford was an industrious, thrifty, intel-
ligent man, whose place. Elm Farm, was on the main
post-road from Albany to Schenectady. It would seem
as though the farm environment did not wholly absorb
Josiah Sanford, for he dabbled occasionally in the
business of a contractor, when it looked like a profit-
able occupation. In this way he contracted to build
and did build a portion of the turnpike between Al-
bany and Schenectady, and built other roads and even
bridges in the vicinity. He, too, had the gift of fore-
sight, for he was one of the prime movers in the plans,
just developing at the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
tury, for building the Erie Canal. This was a period
of considerable enthusiasm and activity in the growth
of the farm communities of Central New York, for

102 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

in 1829 the !N'ew York legislature granted a charter
for a railroad between Albany and Schenectady and
Josiah Stanford was one of the principal contractors
for this road. As a boy, Leland Stanford spent most
of his spare time watching some of this construction
work which was close to his father's home. From his
infancy, almost, the boy was saturated with the business
of railroads. Most of the men who came to his father's
house discussed the railroad business. Furthermore,
it was one of the most vital and inspiring subjects of
that comparatively early period in railroad develop-
ment in America. Transportation then was still a
problem of vast conjecture and prophecy. It stimu-
lated the imagination of engineers and business men
so that they dreamed of the vast railroad achievements
of to-day. Leland Stanford, then a boy, shared the ex-
citement of these dreams, traveling in imagination with
them when he heard his father and his friends dis-
cussing such a wild project as building a railroad as far
as Oregon. His life on the farm was an active one.
He was up at five every morning in winter, and four
in summer, to do those early chores that the
city lad escapes. He went to the public schools of his
vicinity till he was twelve years old, and for three years
he was taught at home. When he was fifteen he
cleared off a wide sweep of timber land which his
father had contracted for, and with his share of this
work, the first money he ever earned, he paid for his
own tuition at an academy in Clinton, E". Y. The
chief curiosity of his boyhood was the construction,
equipment and extension of a railroad. His boyish

i

LELAND STANFORD 103

imagination, when lie was only thirteen, eagerly
grasped the plans to build a railroad as far west as
Oregon, regarded by many at that time as a wild
project.

" In after years he recalled especially a long session
between his father and Mr. Whitney, one of the en-
gineers of construction of the Mohawk and Hudson
River Railway, in which the great plan of an over-
land steam road to Oregon was discussed from all
points of view. His father stubbornly maintained that
it could be done, in spite of obvious engineering diffi-
culties, just as years later in California, Leland Stan-
ford insisted that the Sierra ISTevada Mountains could
be conquered by railroad transportation. That night
was the beginning of a dream that materialized many
years later.

The first years of Leland Stanford's career were not
of any brilliant promise. He chose the career of a
lawyer, and began his studies in the office of Wheaton,
Doolittle and Hodley, in Albany. At the end of three
years he was admitted to the bar. Those were the days
when the slogan of youth was, ''Go West, Young Man !"
and the newly appointed member of the bar promptly
took this advice. He selected a small town, in Wis-
consin, called Port Washington, where he hung out his
shingle. Men were enthusiastic about the western
country in those days, and Port Washington, though
a community of about 1700 people, was boomed as the
future great shipping point of the lake region, with
expectations to rival Milwaukee or Chicago in this re-
spect. Young Leland Stanford succeeded in this early

104 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

venture as a practicing lawyer, at the end of the first
year having earned $1200, in those days a pros-
perous revenue. In fact he indulged himself, on the
strength of this prosperity, in a trip home to Albany
in 1850, when he was just twenty-six years of age.
Without heralding the intentions of this trip, the young
man no doubt had returned home with the specific
plan of winning Jane Lathrop, daughter of Dyer La-
throp, a merchant of Albany, one of the oldest families
in that aristocratic Dutch and English settlement. At
any rate, they were married and he returned with his
young bride to Port Washington, Wisconsin, where
they lived for two years. Wliatever the prospects of
a young law^^er might have been, had Leland Stanford
remained there he might never have been the man of
large affairs he became. A kindly fate, in the
disguise of what seemed a catastrophe, forced him into
the far West. His office was burned out, with his en-
tire law library and all papers, documents, and valu-
able files. It was the total destruction of his first lad-
der, and he received the first real bump of his young
life. There was nothing left but to begin again. It
was about this time that tlie great discovery of gold in
California had been made, and the young man decided
that was the place to which to go. He returned to
Albany first, where his wife failed to get her father's
permission to go with her husband into the unsettled
portions of what was then a wild country, and she
remained in Albany. The young husband didn't waver
in his plans, though those who saw in later years
how devoted and sins^le-minded he and his wife were

LELAND STANFORD 105

can appreciate the courage it took to leave her for an
adventure that promised hardship, danger, and a long
separation.

His five brothers had preceded him to California,
and that no doubt partly influenced his decision.
It took him thirty-eight days from Albany to San
Francisco,! via steamer to Nicaragua, including twelve
days crossing the Isthmus. The memory of that te-
dious, uncomfortable trip no doubt stimulated Mr.
Stanford's determination to shorten it by building
the Central Pacific to a point where it joined the Union
Pacific. He found his brothers conducting a general
merchandise business in Sacramento, and soon he be-
gan a mercantile career for himself at Cold Springs,
Eldorado County.

He did not plunge into the speculative adventure of
the prospector for gold. He didn't go out and pan
dirt with the gambling impulse of the gold digger. He
was a cautious, far-seeing man, and instead, he opened
a store at Michigan Bluffs which was the central busi-
ness point of the Placer County mining district. It
was a rough, pioneer mining camp, and here the young
lawyer endured some of the hardships of that frontier
life in the '50s, in California.

In an address delivered forty years later he referred
to these experiences.

^The true history of the Argonauts of the nineteenth
century has to be written. No poet has yet arisen to
innnortalize their achievements in verse. They had
no Jason to lead them, no oracles to prophesy success,
nor enchantments to divert danger; but like self-

106 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

reliant Americans, they pressed forward to the land of
promise, and traversed thousands of miles where the
Greeks heroes traveled hundreds. They went hy ship
and by wagon, on horseback and on foot, a mighty
army, passing over mountains and deserts, enduring
privations and sickness; they were the creators of a
commonwealth, the builders of States."

Among the gifts which Leland Stanford had in-
herited or acquired was a shrewd business sense, for
he invested in mining operations, prospered, and in
three years bought out his brothers in Sacramento and
immediately went East and returned with his wife to
Sacramento. Some of his friends have always insisted
that he was blessed with good luck ; at any rate, he found
himself in 1855, at the age of thirty-one, firmly estab-
lished in business in Sacramento on a large scale. Up
to this time the young man's work had been centered
on making provisions for a home which he had lost
in Wisconsin. There came to him, in a very short
time, a realization that the political may also be a part
of a man's patriotic obligations, so he became one of
the first founders of a new party in California,
the Republican Party, when he was still a young man
in 1856. He ran for office in the State twice, and
was twice defeated. In 1860 v/hile a delegate at large
to the Republican National Convention, he became a
close friend of Abraham Lincoln, for whose nomination
he was an influential advocate. These were the trying
years of strife and civil war, and Lincoln's anxieties
as to the possibility that California might secede from
the Union made him value the friendship of Leland

LELAND STANFORD 107

Stanford. At the invitation of Lincoln, he remained
several weeks in Washington after the President's in-
auguration, and was consulted by him as to the loyalty
of California to the Union.

In 1861, after a vigorous campaign, Leland Stan-
ford was elected Governor of California. He was only
thirty-seven years of age, a youthful Governor, espec-
ially at a critical period in both State and National
affairs. He accomplished reforms. He organized the
militia, abated the evils of squatter claims in the State,
established a State Normal School and reduced the in-
debtedness of the State by one half. His services as the
young War Governor of California alone would en-
title him to a permanent place in National history.

The project for constructing the Central Pacific
Railroad was chiefly an achievement of his boyhood
dreams, awakened when he listened to his father's ar-
gument with Mr. Whitney about building a road from
Albany to Oregon.

^ ^'Never mind," he said to his wife during their
voyage to California on a rough sea, ^^a time will come
when I will build a railroad for you to go home on."

With what was regarded as a visionary faith in an
engineer, Theodore D. Judah, who insisted that he
could build a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Moun-
tains, Leland Stanford induced his fellow merchants in
Sacramento to subscribe enough to send this engineer
to make a preliminary survey. This was the origin,
the beginning of the Central Pacific. The men who
started the enterprise were Leland Stanford, Collis P.
Huntington, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins and

108 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

James Bailey. C. P. Huntington was a hardware
merchant and lie was the first supporter of Leland
Stanford's plans. These five men*"brought upon them-
selves the jibes and jeers of the thoughtless multitude
for their organization of the Central Pacific. The .
whole project was treated with ridicule-.iiiid contempt \\
bj every man of wealth in California. The five mer-
chants stood alone, with their comparatively small cap-
ital pooled and committed to the project. Appeals for
support to the wealthy men of the State failed entirely.
It probably would never have been accomplished, and
the five merchants of Sacramento would have gone
broke, except for Leland Stanford's success in getting
an Act of Congress by Vvdiich Government aid was
given to the construction of the Central Pacific. It
was a gigantic task managed by these men of ability
and courage, which fulfilled Leland Stanford's dream
as a boy, a transcontinental railroad. The junction with
the Union Pacific was made in the spring of 1869,
and every one of the five men who had risked every-
thing against superhuman odds made a colossal fortune.

Governor Stanford became the largest landowner in
California. When he contemplated building the Stan-
ford University he and his wife visited the president
of a Xew England College and asked what amount
it would require to endow such an institution.

'About $5,000,000," said the president.

"Don't you think," said Leland Stanford, turning
to his wife, "we had better make it ten millions ?"

He died on his estate, ^Palo Alto, suddenly, June
20,1893. ^ --'^--^~^-

CHAELES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D.

(1834 )

A GREAT EDUCATIONAL LEADER

From " The Happy Life," by permission of Thos. Y. Crowell & Co.
CHARLES WILLL^M ELIOT

^^•' IStW r^ipr

CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D.

(1834 )

A GREAT EDUCATIONAL LEADER

AIST American gentleman is a type that Harvard
has educated for many years. Many other
moral forces of character have also developed
in the long stretch of its impressive influence. Dr.
Charles William Eliot, President Emeritus, in an ad-
;dress upon the character of a gentleman, said:

''In the first place, he will be a quiet person. His
speech will be gentle and his demeanor quiet. I have
had many visiting college presidents and teachers say
to me, 'Where are your students ? I don't hear them
about the yard. It seems to me this is a very quiet
campus. It is not much like ours.' 'Now that is a
fact. The Harvard Yard is favorably known as the
quietest college enclosure in the country. If you hear
a fellow bawling about the yard, you can be perfectly
sure that he is an outsider or a newcomer. A gentle-
man is a serene person."

It was in that Yard that the venerable President
Emeritus, when he was eight or ten years old, passed
a great deal of his time. His boyhood was familiar
with the character of the Yard, for his father, Samuel
Atkins Eliot, was Treasurer of Harvard College. He
had been Mayor of Boston, a Representative in Con-
ill

112 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

gress, before then. Therefore Dr. Eliot's career was
obviously the fortunate one of an American gentleman
who found occupation and habit of thought predestined
for him at Harvard.

He was born in 1834, heir to the best social tradi-
tions, an ancestry that was irreproachable, and natural
gifts of very promising proportions. As soon as he was
able to adjust his alphabet into words, he spelled Har-
vard. It has been the bread and salt of his intellectual
interests, and more than that, he has strengthened the
mould of the University graduate with a moral force
peculiarly his o^ti.

Dr. Eliot was graduated from Harvard some time
before the Civil War, but remained near the Yard as
a tutor and assistant professor of chemistry. He was
nineteen when he was graduated. When he was only
thirty-five he was elected President of Harvard. His
youth for a position of such importance did not enter
into the discussion of his election at the time. There
were criticisms of the fact that he was a layman and a
scientist. He began his long service, over half a cen-
tury of presiding influence in American education, with
some radical and useful changes of administration.
Up to this time he had apparently been so deeply im-
mersed in the study of chemistry that his career as an
inventor or scientist seemed assured.
- Dr. Eliot's first progressive move in the National
program of education was to create more efiicient gradu-
ate schools. He was the leading "champion" of the
elective system. The requirements of admission to
Harvard were another progressive feature of Dr. Eliot's

CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D. 11

early duties as President of the University, which led
to wide criticism of his radical tendencies. He made
so many permanent improvements in our educational
system that he soon found himself the center of Na-
tional discussion and interest. He was a professor ap-
plied to the restless elements of Americans growth in
the seventies, when every one was talking about big
things.

One of the distinguished Harvard teachers always
said in comment upon the future of America, ^^Yes,
yes, we must have large things first, size first ; the rest
will come.'' Dr. Eliot, however, never neglected the
smaller details of growth. He was a man of practical
purpose in all his cultural progress, he did not seek
to make things '^look big just for the pleasure of
measuring their size." While he sought enthusiasm
for Harvard standards, he also preserved the conserva-
tive principles of the quiet American gentleman, "quiet
for the best of reasons — namely, that effectiveness re-
quires steady, close attention and that attention implies
stillness and a mind intent," as he said once.

He raised the standards of secondary schools and
introduced an element of choice in the selection of col-
lege studies. When he became chairman of that Na-
tional reform body called the Committee of Ten in
1899, he urged the abandonment of indiscriminate in-
formation courses. He democratized the college spirit
towards work by equalizing certain studies, standardiz-
ing the time necessary to be devoted to them by stu-
dents. Most of the great universities accepted this
standard. Then, too, Dr. Eliot discouraged the High

114 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHARACTER

Schools from conducting their courses as if they
were preparatory for a university training, because he
thought that secondary schools conducted by public
funds should not prepare their students for education in
universities, which many of them were never able to
attain. One other important change he brought about
was the cooperation of colleges in holding common en-
trance examinations throughout the country. This
was made possible by the adoption of the educational
standards he had suggested and fixed.

It was the new education of the whole country which
Dr. Eliot shouldered when he became the President
of Harvard. Up to that time Harvard's President
was not important in public affairs. Dr. Eliot not
only made Harvard a National monument of his own
executive genius, but he brought National attention to
the important character of educational responsibility
imposed on the presidents of all leading universities
in America.

As a personality, Dr. Eliot was of course misunder-
stood by a large section of the country when he
began his reforms. Especially was he exposed to crit-
icism by the undergTaduates of Harvard. One of
Dr. Eliot's innovations was the rule that it was bad
form to encourage intercourse between members of the
faculty and the students. This led to an impression
that the professors were harsh and that the Harvard
students were boorish. The college spirit and the aca-
demic camaraderie that were crushed at Harvard came
to a focus in the person of a young assistant professor
who was dropped from the university. The young

CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D. 115

professor represented the genial, companionable spirit
of college life at Oxford, which might have been con-
sidered sufficiently acceptable for Harvard, but Dr.
Eliot thought differently. He did not believe that it
was w^ell for the boys to visit the tutors and professors
socially. It was only a temporary decision, for it soon
became apparent that too wide a breach had developed
between faculty and students, and there followed a
series of weekly teas at Brooks Hall, presided over
by ladies from Boston, bishops when available, and
talented persons who could really entertain. In this
way the chasm between teacher and student at Har-
vard was finally bridged, for it was a sincere move-
ment, a Harvard dawn. It has made Harvard more
human ever since. To restore the impression of Dr.
Eliot's complete reversal of opinion, much was said to
show that he had really been secretly waiting for the
time when it would be possible to stand ' 'effulgent
with social love in his heart, loving the boys, encourag-
ing the professors, shedding influence," to quote an
undergraduate of this period.

'^Xow as a matter of fact," continues this under-
graduate's record of the new era in Harvard, which be-
gan in 1880, 'Tresident Eliot was the spiritual father
of the glacial era heretofore in progress, he was the
figurehead of these previous dreadful times, and I have
sometimes stopped to shake hands with him because
I thought it was right, — and also, I confess, because I
thought it would cause him pain. Such is the silli-
ness of the undergraduate mind."

The trustees, the ladies, the bishops, and the society

116 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

leaders in Boston, it seems, gathered thick and close
around Dr. Eliot at this time, and ^^thawed him out."
They told him he was misunderstood, that he had
a heart of gold, and he responded to the treatment.
He responded so promptly to any practical event that
passed before him, that he could not have done other-
wise than yield to the social warmth that came hot
upon him.

A picture of Dr. Eliot about this time, when he
had been in office at Harvard over ten years and was
tolerably well equipped with a knowledge of what he
wanted to do for the students, is interesting.

^The Dr. Eliot who first swam into my undergradu-
ate ken as the martinet who stalked across the yard,
and who was traditionally regarded as an important,
hostile, and sinister influence, was a very unusual per-
son. His voice was remarkable — a low, vibrant, con-
trolled, melodious voice that seemed to have so much
reverence in it; the voice, you would say, of a culti-
vated man. ISTo ideals except ideals of conduct had
reality for him. Literature, philosophy, and all that,
were the names of things in bottles to him. With this
was combined a truly unique pity for poverty in a
student, and, a pious belief in education as a means
of self-advancement. A sincere, spontaneous repre-
sentative of the average American attitude toward col-
lege students was Dr. Eliot in the '80 s. By some
accident which separated him from his own class, —
for 'New England possessed many men with a feeling
for the Humanities, — he became representative of the
country at large.

CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D. 117

^There was, in Dr. Eliot, the presence of force. The
voice was force, its vibrations were the vibrations of
force. The modulations of it were the modulations
of force, the melody was the melody of force. Behind
it there was a two-handed engine of human pertinacity,
... a genius for the understanding of men.''

Dr. Eliot grew up, from the period just described,
to a National size that has made of him a man figure,
adored by men who have seen that figure grow to the
height and strength of venerable age, unimpaired by
physical intrusions. There has always been a glamor
about his personality, which the undergraduate, in his
analysis, foreshadowed. It was the glamor of culture,
of breeding, of knowledge^ and of intense sincerity.
Every one believed in his righteousness, his real hu-
mility, as an expression of intense loyalty, of that
classic attachment to Harvard and Kew England that
is in itself a text of character. Dr. Eliot demonstrated
the chief element of strength and dependability. Most
things came to him in life, but he received them with
humble, respectful interest, and it gradually occurred
to people that Dr. Eliot was a man destined to answer
all, ,inq[uiries of his time and age. Everything about
him was vital — his wonderfiil low voice, his benignant
smile, well poised, never to be forgotten. Dr. Eliot's
position in the world of Boston has been one of un-
dimmed g^ory all his life.

The surprising thing about this famous educational
leader is the fact that although he emerged from the
eighteenth century (his father was born in 1798), still
he became a leader in the nineteenth century. His

118 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

formality indicates that he never was really young.
^'He had the temperament of the ecclesiastic, of the
Archbishop/' writes the observer of Dr. Eliot's life.

The modem educational system is a reflex of Dr.
Eliot's character that has influenced his generation
and will extend into the next. The singular advantage
of observing the effect of his o\vn educational ideas
upon many men, through the entire course of their
lives, came to Dr. Eliot before his retirement as Presi-
dent of Harvard. Addressing a group of new students
in Harvard in 1905, three years before, he said :
s.. "I suppose I may fairly be called one of the elder
brethren; because it is fifty-six years since I came
hither in the same grade many of you now occupy.
So I have had a chance to watch a long stream of
youth, growing up into men, and passing on to old
men; and I have had a chance to see what the durable
satisfaction of their lives turned out to be. My con-
temporaries are old men now, and I have seen their
sons and their grandsons coming on in the over-
^ ^flowing stream.".

/'One of the indispensable satisfactions of life is
health," Dr. Eliot advised young men. ''We have to
build on bodily wholesomeness and vitality." The
next important lesson he had observed was to secure
a strong mental grip, a wholesome capacity for hard
work. But chief among all in the transition of any
man's life. Dr. Eliot said, was "a spotless reputation." ,

"It comes from living with honor, on honor. Some
things the honorable man cannot do, never does. He
never wrongs or degrades a woman. He .never op-

CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D. 119

presses or clieats a person weaker or poorer than him-
self. jBte never betrays a trust. He is honest, sin-
cere, candid, and generous."

These are the standards of Dr. Eliot's life that in-
spire. Perhaps this great leader of education had less
to overcome than many other men who reached a con-
spicuous place in history, and yet grief did not pass
him by. In the year that he took office at Harvard,
he lost his young wife, the companion of his youth and
his ambition, who was Ellen Derby Peabody. A few
years later he married Grace Miller Hopkinson. The
affections and secret ties of his character were cen-
tered in his son, Charles Eliot. The latter became a
man of some fame as a landscape gardener, in fact, was
in the zenith of his success, when he died. This was
another blow that brought grief and sadness to Dr.
Eliot's long life. This bereavement was deeply real-
ized, for he erected a beautiful monument of paternal
devotion, a memorial gift ''for the dear son who died in
his bright prime." The boy had inherited his love of
nature, his ambition to refresh the choked and stifling
cities with flowers and sky-room, from his delicate,
frail, and poetic mother, Ellen Peabody Eliot.

Marriage was one of the sound suggestions of Dr.
Eliot^s new education. He always urged early mar-
riages. 'Took forward lo being married," he said.
"That forward look is one of the greatest safeguards of
honorable living. Look forward to a blessed home of
your own. I have known in my lifetime many fathers
who came with great anxiety to talk about their sons'
careers in the university, because they remembered that

120 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHAEACTER

their own careers had not been a good example for their
sons, and thej knew their sons knew it."

Dr. Eliot was an idealist with that high and rare gift
of perfect judgment. He reduced the necessary vir-
tues of a man's life to four ideals: ^'Beauty, h^npr?
duty, love. Their true and sufficient ends are knowl-
edge and righteousness.

In measuring the character that has made Dr. Eliot a
leader in America, it has been said of him that Har-
vard was only a part of it, for it is not only as a col-
lege president, philosopher, statesman or teacher that
he is known. In 1908 he retired, to be declared by
representative Americans "the greatest citizen in the
United States."

PHILLIPS BROOKS

(1835-1893)

GEEAT PREACHER-PHILOSOPHEK

PHILLIPS BROOKS

"'"''^'-'^^Sr

2^^Zr''^

^^N(

'^Or.^-fOjt

^^^-ro

Nsi

PHILLIPS BEOOKS

(1835-1893)

GEEAT PEEACHER-PHILOSOPHER

KEEP very near to your Saviour, dear Philly,
and remember the sacred vows that are upon
you, and you will prosper/' wrote Phillips
Brooks's mother to him, when he was studying for the
ministry at the Theological Seminary in Alexandria,
[Virginia.

Over a hundred years before, in 1630, to be exact,
his ancestor, the Rev. George Phillips, said the same
thing, for he founded those religious principles that
have dominated Puritan beliefs ever since. He was
the founder of Puritan law in Xew England. Each
of the succeeding generations of the Phillips family
had included a Puritan minister.

When Mary Ann Phillips married William Gray
Brooks, there was united a religious ancestry that be-
gan in the seventeenth century, for Thomas Brooks
and Rev. George Phillips migrated from England in
the same year and they were associated in the same
parish at Watertown, near Boston.

Erom his mother, Phillips Brooks inherited that
form of religious belief which had only one purpose,
to maintain the Puritan faith. He perpetuated the
creed of his ancestors in its integrity. The family

123

124 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

lived a rare, devoted, yet isolated life, because they
did not care to go out into society. The children were
educated at home, the chief influence of that education
being religion. The parents lived only for their chil-
dren. They cared nothing for their own pleasures or
advancement, their whole energies and interests being
centered in the children and the home.. It was, of
course, an entirely religious home. Prayers were said
in the house before work every morning, and every
evening at nine o'clock.

'^'"' Any one calling on the Brooks family in the evening
would be sure to find them all sitting around the table
in the "back parlor" ; father writing, because he found
leisure for his literary ambitions only then; mother
sewing; the children studying their lessons for
the next day. It was a quiet, affectionately in-
timate family circle, gathered together in a silent group
like this, night after night. Visitors rarely came in,
because they were not encouraged. They were very
happy evenings, occasionally enlivened by the reading
aloud of some new book, that is, after the lessons were
learned. The real thing that kept the children at
home, however, was the tremendous, concentrated love
that their parents bestowed upon them with such united
devotion. It was a charm the children could not es-
cape from. It cast a spell over Phillips Brooks that
lasted in his memory all his life, an inspiring influence
that kept him always a child at heart.

His earliest recollections are those of the Episcopal
Church, which his mother had chosen in a moment of
compromise between the doctrine that urged conscious

PHILLIPS BROOKS 125

relationship with God and the doctrine that expressed
a faith in the word of the Scriptures and no more.
Both parents went to St. Paul's on Tremont Street,
Boston. His mother, so deeply attached to the religious
purposes of life, was not satisfied until her husband,
who had been Unitarian, should become a communi-
cant of St. Paul's, not merely an attendant. At the
age of twelve Phillips Brooks witnessed the ceremony
in the church of his father's confirmation at the age
of forty-two. His mother was greatly impressed with
the importance of this act, though it aroused anxieties
as to how soon her sons would do the same.

There came to St. Paul's Church, about this time,
a new rector, the famous Dr. Vinton. The impression
which this preacher made upon Phillips Brooks was
very great and lasted till he entered the ministry him-
self. In some ways Dr. Vinton resembled Phillips
Brooks. He was very tall, majestic in carriage, a most
impressive figure in the pulpit. He was the foremost
Episcopal preacher in America in 1842. He was
evangelical in his character, an inspired preacher, hav-
ing left medical practice to become a minister. To
Phillip Brooks, himself a man of rare idealistic per-
ception. Dr. Vinton was a religious influence. His
mother felt this power also, and so that she might bet-
ter interpret religion to her children she attended the
Bible classes that Dr. Vinton conducted, in which he
explained the Scriptures. At night she would stay
for a little while at the bedside of her children and tell
them these Bible stories before they went to sleep.
She never ceased her religious watchfulness, for when

126 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

her sons became ministers, she guarded them still from
dangerous doctrines which she feared might attack
them. Every Sunday the children learned a hymn,
which was recited when the family gathered in the
evening. When Phillips Brooks was sixteen, he knew
two hundred hymns by heart.

It delighted that devoted mother when she found
that Phillips Brooks, at eleven, was writing religious
essays. They gave promise of the future man, for he
was searching, then, for the ^^sunlight of truth," one
of his favorite illustrations of religious purity in his
sermons. He went to a small school w^hen he was four
years old, and finally was graduated from the Latin
School, preparing for Harvard, third on the list, and he
received the Franklin medal which meant excellence in
final examinations. Still he must have found school
difficult, for on a scrap of paper he wrote this solemn
vow, when he was thirteen :

"I, Phillips Brooks, do herebye promise, and pledge
myself to study, henceforth, to the best of my ability.
Phillips Brooks.''

He was very large and tall for his age, being within
an inch of six feet, and naturally it made him awkward.
He carried his head on one side and often leaned on
his brother's arm. This was the period when the in-
ward development of his character was beginning. He
thought about things that many people have never
thought about in all their lives. He thought about the
soul. It was an odd thing for a great big strong boy
to be thinking about all the time — but he was only
living over again the boyhood of his religious ancestors.

PHILLIPS BROOKS 127

for thej, too, Lad been absorbed in such thoughts when
thej were his age. His schoolmates noticed that after
school he never stayed to play, but went straight home.
There was always about Phillips Brooks, all his life,
a reserve that no one ever penetrated. There was
about him, as a boy, some shyness. In him were the
sacred fires of a life devoted wholly to the service of
religion. It was while he was still at the Latin School,
then in Boston, preparing for Harvard, that he wrote
many maxims of conduct and thought bearing upon
religious duty. It was evident that he was destined
to be a minister, for his thoughts and ambitions were
all of the spirit.

The need of expressing himself was imperative.
He wrote these essays out in fine penmanship which
his father had taught him. His mother thought less of
the importance of good handwriting than of the
thoughts themselves, no matter how they were written.

^N'aturally, a boy with such unusual ideas for his age
had few companions, the absence of which he did not
miss at all, because his home was far more satisfying
to him than playing in the school-yard or running about
with mischievous boys. The inward development of
the boy, which began when he was fourteen^ continued
through his college days at Harvard and to the date
of his admission to a theological college. The reserve,
the loneliness of these years during which the youth in
him was subjugated to the inner fires of religious in-
spiration were the natural result of a predestined ca-
reer. They were the years of his conversion, the period
in his character when he found it necessary to find a

128 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

solution of his own life that was not merely a matter
of success to him, but a matter of finding out for him-
self how the religious teachings of his childhood could
be applied to the daily life of himself and others.

He entered Harvard on his sixteenth birthday. Like
his ancestors he absorbed the classics, won prizes for
English literature, wrote better than any other students.
Still, no one of his college mates remembers him for elo-
quence, for which he was famous in the pulpit after-
wards. He made no impression upon the literary so-
cieties of Harvard. His reserve completely alienated
him from any outward expression. That is why he
kept many notebooks, in which he found an outlet for
the ideas he could not talk about with the boys at col-
lege, although he became a member of the Alpha Delta
Phi and the Phi Beta Kappa. Phillips Brooks was a
marked man at Harvard, however, for at sixteen he
was six feet, three and a half inches tall. The sur-
prising thing to his classmates was that he took no ac-
tive part in college athletics. Sports- xdid. not appeal
to him, although nature had built him to be a giant of
strength. Even walking did not appeal to him. He
spent his time between studies reading Carlyle, Emer-
son, Johnson, Goldsmith, Dryden, Swift. Probably his
most religious teac^her among these authors was Emer-
son. While he was at Harvard there came a period of
^^religious doubt," over the country, which especially af-
fected the university students. Lord Tennyson's poem,
''In Memoriam," became a text to young Phillips
Brooks. He kept repeating lines from it. It disturbed
the rock-ribbed principles of the old Puritan laws.

PHILLIPS BROOKS 129

These transitions and changes in old standards delayed
him from presenting himself for confirmation.

At twenty, when he was graduated from Harvard, he
was still a boy in manner and feeling. He always had
a deep emotional nature, so that his ideas poured from
him in a torrent of words so rapidly that many people
believed he had adopted that form of quick talking, of
rapid delivery, to cover up a defect of speech. He
left Harvard fully aware that, in the opinion of young
men of his day, the Church was' not looked upon as a
lucrative profession, but he appeared to be under the
sway of some hidden inward force. One of his class-
mates described his impression of Phillips Brooks as
reminding him of Wordsworth's line, ''Moving a.bout in
worlds not realized."

'- Before he reached his twentieth birthday, he took a
position as a teacher at the Boston Latin School. In
Lis mind, at that time, was a plan to become a pro-
fessor, after a trip abroad. Though he was well fitted
to teach, he lacked tlie gift of maintaining discipline
in his classes, and failed to hold the position. He
resigned. His father explained it amply when he
wrote :

^'The class of boys were from fifteen to seventeen
and he was only twenty. The task was too much for
him.''

In a sense it was a disaster and completely ended
any plans he may have had to become a teacher. To
add to it, the superintendent of the school informed
Phillips Brooks when he was leaving that he had never
known a man who failed as a school teacher to succeed

130 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHAKACTER

in anything else. Then followed six months of re-
tirement, of inward shame at this first failure ; so great
that when Dr. Vinton sent for him, his father replied
that the boy was too miserable and crushed to see any
one. This was a period of great trial, during which
the inner struggle was revealed in voluminous notes
written in notebooks which have been preserved. He
left home suddenly for a theological seminary of the
Protestant Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia.
He consulted no one but his father and mother, and
his friends, missing him from Boston, were very much
surprised. Writing his father he said, ^Tlease let all
that matter drop. I said scarcely anything to any one
about it but you and mother. Consider me here at
the seminary without debating how I got here."

Just before leaving home, at this turning-point in
his career, he wrote the following in a notebook :
- ^As we pass from some experience to some experi-
ment, from a tried to an untried scene of life, it is as
when we turn to a new page in a book we have never
read before, but whose author we know and love and
trust to give us on every page words of counsel and
"purity and strengthening virtue."
^ In his second year he came under the influence of
Goethe's poetry. He seem.ed to accept Goethe's con-
ception of life. This influence remained with him,
for part of his creed in all his sermons was that the
Christian life involved with spiritual culture an in-
sight into the relations of art to the highest develop-
ment.

He sent his first sermon to his father, before deliver-

PHILLIPS BROOKS 131

ing it. The manuscript was marked ^^private." Writ-
ing his father, he says indifferently :

"Tell me how it struck you ? How it would have
struck you had you heard a strange young man of
six foot four preach it in your own pulpit, what you
would have said about it when you first got home ? Be
indulgent with it, it is my first."

It was his first sermon and was considered his mani-
festo of faith. He became a lay reader, preaching
extemporaneous sermons when assigned to fill vacant
pulpits here and there. One Sunday, when he was
twenty-four, while he was conducting a service for the
Sharon Mission, about four miles from the seminary,
in Virginia, two gentlemen called and offered him the
rectorship of the Church of the Advent in Philadel-
phia. After a week of extreme sensitiveness, in which
he dreaded the possibility of a failure such as he had
encountered in his effort to become a teacher, he ac-
cepted a temporary attachment to the church in Phila-
delphia as an assistant pastor for three months. The
vestry could then offer him the pastorship again, or he
could himself withdraw. He was appointed rector of
the church.

In a way his life had been an experiment up to this
time, but on the day of his ordination there were some
present who were confident for him; among them, of
course, his father. The Sunday after he was ordained
he paid a visit to Rev. H. M. Randolph, later Bishop
of Southern Virginia, who had offered the young man
his pulpit for that day. Bishop Randolph's impres-
sion of Phillips Brooks, the youngster of twenty-four,

132 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

is an impression of all that his whole life fulfilled as a
preacher and as a teacher. ,

""'T! am reminded of these characteristics of his preach-
ing/' the Bishop records, ^'which all who ever heard him
will recognize, — a singular absence of self-conscious-
ness, a spontaneity of beautiful thinking clothed in pure
English words, a joy in his own thoughts, and a vic-
torious mastering of the truth he was telling, encoun-
tered with humility and reverence and love for the
congregation. I have heard him often since, and thel
impression was always the same."

This was written as an appreciation years after Phil-
lips Brooks became a leader in the closing years of the
nineteenth century.

Several years were spent in Philadelphia, but in
1869, when he was thirty-four years old, he received
a call from Trinity Church, Boston, VN^here he became
famous as a preacher, as a personality of rare charm
and spiritual force. He became Bishop of Massachu-
setts in 1891, against his inclination, repeatedly
expressed in his correspondence.

He wrote in one of his notebooks before he was
twenty, the whole inward development of his character :

^'~Liie is developing the energies, of thought^ while
thought is working out the richness that lies hid in life."

MOODY AND SANKEY

(1837-1899) (1840-1909)

PIONEER EVANGELISTS

DWIGHT LYMAN MOODY

MOODY AND SANKEY

(1837-1899) (1840-1909)

PTONEER EVANGELISTS

BETWEEN Dwight Lyman Moody, the famous
evangelist, and Ira David Sankey, who "sang
the gospel," there was a close association of
work, for over forty years. They were Christian
workers, each of them pledged to save the souls of
his fellow-men. The Moody and Sankey hymn-book,
next to the Bible, had the widest circulation in the
world. It is printed in all languages. Thousands
upon thousands of people went to hear the great evan-
gelist preach, and listen to the rare hymn-singing of
Ira D. Sankey. When they were asked to explain why
they had the po^ver to attract such great crowds, each
one, in his own way, said that it was because they were
inspired by the Holy Ghost.

Apart from this simple confession of faith, they were
no different from other men, except that once inspired
by a tremendous Christian force of character they
were able to help men and women to live Christian
lives.

Of the two men, Moody, the evangelist preacher, was
the more remarkable, because he overcame so many ob-
stacles in his life which Sankey never had to overcome.

135

136 FAMOUS LEADERS OP CHARACTER

But the tie that held them together was a sort of holy
partnership, the foundation of which was laid long be-
fore they had ever heard of each other.

They were born in different parts of the country,
Moody in the hills of Massachusetts, Sankey in the
valley country of Pennsylvania. Moody's parents were
poor, obscure farmers. Sankey's father served in the
State Legislature and was well to do all his life. They
were widely separated in educational advantages, but
their influence in the world came from the same source
of character in them; they shared the responsibilities
they felt in order to spread the gospel. Of the two
men, Sankey had the quieter nature. Moody was im-
pulsive, violent in his passion for religious feeling.

Outwardly Moody was the strong, rugged, abrupt
teacher of the Bible; Sankey, in his singing, thrilled
the crowd with the gentle sweetness of his voice. The
sincerity of his own conversion was something he made
others feel when he sang.

Moody's boyhood was a rough and tumble fight
against poverty, on a small farm which his father, who
died when he was four years old, left heavily mort-
gaged. His mother, with nine children to support, of
whom Dwight was -the sixth child, refused to appren-
tice any of them. She fought to keepT them with her.
She loved them all with a devotion that could not bear
thought of separation from any of them. There was
room to shelter them in the two-story frame farmhouse
in ^orthfield, Massachusetts, and out of the three acres
of land they managed to struggle along together ; often
phort of food and clothes, always on the edge of being

MOODY AND SANKEY 137

compelled to break up the home. His mother was
very religious. She made it a* rule, before every meal,
to make the children stand up and repeat, together,
some text from the Bible. She explained to them that
they must put their trust in God, and if they wanted
anything they must pray for it.

Dwight was the strongest of them all. He had mus-
cles like iron, and his body was heavy and powerful.
He could always get a job doing extra chores for the
neighbors on the farms, in between work at home. He
was somewhat of a terror to the other boys, because of
his strength. He was a natural leader among them,
especially in the mischief of the neighborhood, so full of
life that it was impossible to control him. His sense
of fun was inexhaustible. He was always inventing
some trick that would make the others laugh, usually
at the expense of some one else.

As a boy he was not interested in religion or the
Bible at all. He had a determined will of his own; an
unmanageable boy, because there was no one stronger
than himself.

His first convincing experience of the power of
prayer came to him when he was about ten years old.
He had gone across lots, up in the hills away from
the roads, and while crawling through a rail fence, one
of the rails broke and the whole fence fell on top of
him, pinning him to the ground. Even with all his
Strength he couldn't get up. Then he yelled for help,
but no one heard him because he was some distance
from the road. When he grew tired of shouting, and
the sun went down, and it began to grow dark, he

138 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

found himself fearing that he might die there, pinned
to the ground, before any one came. He began to think
of his mother and for the first time he thought seriously
of her teaching that God would answer any prayer. So
very humbly he asked God to let him out of his diffi-
culty, to lift the fence that pinned him down. The
answer to his prayer came at once. One of the rails
shifted, he crawled out safely. This experience made
a deep impression on him. Ever afterwards, through
his whole life, he never worried about the future; he
ahvays found that if he prayed earnestly, ''God took
care of me."

This was only the first step in his religious life. He
had yet to learn, that which he taught others to under-
stand, that a Christian life does not mean merely to
pray to save one's self, but above all to save others, too.
After this experience he listened with more attention
to the Bible talks which his mother used to give her
children. Above all she impressed upon him the
habit of charity. When some one came to the house
who needed food she would say to the children, ''Well,
we must cut the loaf in thinner slices, so there will be
enough for all."

He went to the district school like other boys, but he
was often whipped by the teacher, which was the custom
in dealing with unruly boys in those days. Even his
mother believed in that sort of punishment. She would
send him out to get a stick. He would be gone a long
time hunting for a small one, or, if he could find it, a
dead branch. When he brought in such a stick, his
mother would send him out again to get a stronger

MOODY AND SANKEY 139

one. She knew that all the time he spent looking for
the stick was punishment. Once he told her she didn't
hurt him, but never again, for then she punished him
more severely.

One season, at the district school, the older people
decided that they would get a teacher who would rule
without the rattan stick, so a young lady was engaged.
Dwight did not believe she would succeed. One day
she asked him to stay after school, and he winked at
the other boys, as much as to say, "1 told you so, it's
the old stick again." He was surprised when the
teacher told him that she was very unhappy to think
that he, who was the biggest boy in school, should be
so mischievous. She told him that she wanted to rule
with love, and she put him on his honor to be a good
boy, and sent him home. After that he made the other
boys behave, as well as himself. About the last thing
he did in school that was mischievous was when he de-
livered in class the oration of Marc Antony over the
body of Caesar. He arranged to have a box, shaped
like a coffin, brought into the school, and, just at the
most serious place, he kicked the box and out jumped
a cat, which made everybody laugh.

His mother made home the nicest place in the world,
for, even if they were so poor, she was always getting
up parties in the house so as to keep the children near
her. The first time he left home nearly broke his
heart. His older brother had gone to work in Green-
field, a few miles from home, and he got so lonely that
he induced Dwight to join him. All his life Dwight
hated E'ovember, because it was, in that month he left

140 FAMOUS LEABERS OF CHARACTER

home with his brother. He cried all the way, and when
he reached his destination he told his brother he
wouldn't stay. His brother, anxious to keep him in
Greenfield, told him there was an old gentleman who
lived there, who made it a rule to give a penny to every
new boy who came. Just then this man came along the
street, and Dwight was so afraid he wouldn't see him
that he stood right in front of him. The old gentle-
man put his hand on his head, talked to him kindly,
and smiling tenderly at the little boy, said, "Why, this
is a new boy in town, I never saw him before."
His brother said that he had just arrived. So the kind
man put his hand in his pocket, drew out a bright new
penny that looked like gold, and gave it to Dwight.
All his life he remembered this thoughtful piece of kind-
ness, and it made him do many nice things for other
lonely boys and girls in the world.

Of course he was born with a good heart himself, in
spite of his love of mischief, otherwise he couldn't have
appreciated what kindness meant. As he explained it
years later, he had "a passion for men's souls."

When he was seventeen, he had asked his uncle, his
mother's brother, Samuel Holton, who had a shoe store
in Boston, for a job; but his uncle had not answered
him. Later he left home of his own accord and went to
Boston, but did not go to his uncle. He was too proud
to do so. He said afterwards he always secretly be-
lieved that God would provide. He had a hard time
of it, looking for work and not finding it. He was
lonely and hungry and slept out of doors. Gradually
his pride was beaten, and he went to his uncle's shoe

MOODY AND SANKEY 141

store. His "uncle laid down certain rules, told him he
must not boss the help in the store, that he must do his
work, go to church, and not do anything that he didn't
want his mother to know.

^^Go and think it over, and come back Monday," said
his uncle.

"IVe thought it over, sir,'' said Dwight promptly,
"and I'll do my best." He applied himself to busi-
ness, and was one of the best shoe clerks in the
store. His business ability was so apparent that he
could have made a great success as a merchant. He
was a first-class salesman, but while he was in Boston
something happened to him that altered his career
and made him a great evangelist. He went to the Sun-
day School of the Mount Vernon Congregational
Church, — because he had to. He was given a Bible
and told to open it at the gospel of St. John. He pre-
tended to look through the pages of the book, but
couldn't find it. He noticed that the other boys were
laughing at his ignorance. The teacher, Edward Kim-
ball, quickly handed him the Bible opened at the right
place, and asked him for the one he had in his hand.
This gracious act made him very grateful to Mr. Kim-
ball, in fact he felt under obligation to him ever after-
wards. From the Sunday School teacher he learned to
understand the power of religion ; at the same time he
was attending to business with great success in the shoe
store. He wrote his mother that he hoped to save up
a hundred dollars, build a house, rent rooms, and have
her live with him. The landlady where he boarded
was kind and helped him to study his Bible. When

142 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

he had advanced to a point where Mr. Kimball thought
the boy was ready to become a member of the church
he told the minister, Mr. Kirk.

One afternoon in 1856, when Dwight was nineteen,
the minister called on him at the shoe store. In the
back part of the store he asked Dwight Moody to
acknowledge Christ, to take the Christian vows, and join
the church. He found the young man earnest and will-
ing, and they knelt down, where no one could see them,
and prayed; and that was Moody's hour of conversion,
when he solemnly vowed to serve God.

Mr. Moody explained this event of his life when he
said:

^'I was born in the flesh in 1837, in the spirit in
1856."

It is an odd coincidence that in that same year the
man who was to be associated with him, then only a
boy of sixteen living in E^ew Castle, Pennsylvania,
where his father had become president of a bank, was
converted at a revivalist meeting and took similar vows
to devote his life to Christian work. ISTeither of them
knew that they were destined to do such great things
for Christianity and to be united in the world's history
as Moody and Sankey.

Dwight Moody was given membership papers in the
Mount Yernon Congregational Church, and shortly af-
terwards went to Chicago, in search of a better job. He
was then still planning a business life, selling shoes
during the day and studying his Bible at night. He
didn't tell any one, not even his mother, because he was
afraid they wouldn't let him go if he did. It was a

MOODY AND SANKEY 143

terrible blow to his mother when she received a letter
from him, so far away as Chicago.

In Chicago he presented his letters of church mem-
bership to the Plymouth Congregational Church and
was cordially received. He wrote his mother how
happy he was in his Christian vows and that "God
is the same all over the world.'' He got a job with a
shoe firm in Chicago and lived with other clerks in
rooms in the store. And he looked about to see what
he could do in church work.

"I have no education, but I love the Lord Jesus
Christ and I want to do something for him/' he said.

He rented five pews in the Plymouth Congregational
Church and filled them every Sunday with men and
boys he picked up in the street. This was the begin-
ning of his success in evangelical work, getting people
to listen to the word of God. When the men he stopped
in the street asked him what he was doing he replied,
simply, "I'm at work for Jesus Christ."

From these men and boys he found in the street,
he acquired what was known as the Mission Band, a
class of ignorant street gamins. He found an old dilap-
idated "shack" in what was then the lowest and poorest
quarter of Chicago, the North Side, and started a Sun-
day School. These boys were called his "bodyguard."
He coaxed them to come in by giving them bits of maple
sugar which he bought for them. All this time he was
prospering in his business. Finally he was made a
traveling salesman, but this threatened to keep him
away on Sunday from his Sunday School. In six years
he gathered here a membership of a thousand scholars.

144 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

which began with very ragged boys, whom he after-
wards clothed and housed in new quarters in the
ISTorth Market. In any crisis of his life he always felt
that God would provide. So it happened that the
president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Rail-
road gave him a free pass while he was traveling
salesman, so that he could get back to Chicago every
Sunday for his school.

The time came when he had to choose between his
work as an evangelist or his business life, and he re-
signed his job.

He had saved a little money and he put away a thou-
sand dollars to live on for a year and devoted his life to
the great work that made him famous. With part of
his savings he bought a pony, on which he used to
ride through the side streets on Sunday getting new
pupils for his Sunday School. They would climb on
behind him and he would give them rides, and soon
the newspapers began to talk about him. Some called
him ''Crazy Moody," others "Brother Moody" ; but he
kept right on "at work for Jesus Christ."

When he was twenty-five with no other assets but
his pay and plans for others, he married Miss Emma
C. R'evell, who had helped him as a teacher in his
Sunday School. She taught a class of forty middle-
aged men, while his specialty was boys. Sometimes
he had to subdue particularly obstinate boys, as he did
on one occasion when he locked himself in a room with
one. When they came out, they were both battered,
but he said, "It was hard work, but I guess weVe saved
him."

IRA DAVID SAN KEY

TH

iVfvi^

PUBLIC m^^

riLD

MOODY AND SANKEY 145

From Chicago his fame spread, as a revivalist, and
he was called to hold meetings in other towns. Money
was always provided for his ventures, but not until he
had exhausted his savings and found himself sleeping
on the benches in a back room of a Methodist Church,
where he had organized a Young Men's Christian Asso-
ciation. When friends found out his condition they
helped him; and all this while he had money he col-
lected for charity for his boys, and he wouldn't touch a
cent of it.

By the time Dwight was a man, over thirty, he had
already achieved fame as an evangelist preacher. He
had no opposition from the churches, in fact they
helped him for they saw that he was a strong Christian
soldier. It was in Indianapolis, at an International
Sunday School Conference, that he first met Ira D.
Sankey who had been sent to the conference as a dele-
gate from Pennsylvania. In Newcastle, Pennsylvania,
where Sankey lived, he had already become prominent
in church work. He was superintendent of the Meth-
odist Episcopal Sunday School there. He had en-
listed in the Civil War, and served in a regiment in
Maryland. It was during camp life as a soldier that
Mr. Sankey discovered his gift for singing. His first
hymns were sung around the camp fire. As soon as
the war was over he married a young lady who sang
in a church choir, so that when he went to Indianap-
olis to hear Moody preach, he had a family of his
own.

Moody made a tremendous impression upon him.
At last, he felt, here was a man who could talk about

146 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTEB

religion so that everybody understood it. There were
no big words in his talks, but some big ideas. During
the services, a hymn was given out and there was no
one to lead in the singing, no one at least that was very
good at it. Moody realized the value of music in his
evangelistic meetings, but he could not sing much him-
self. So Mr. Sankey stood up and sang the hymn, and
every one was spellbound. Tears rolled down the evan-
gelist's face as he heard Mr. Sankey sing for the first
time.

Dwight Moody was not slow in making up his mind.
He got an introduction to Sankey, and as soon as he
met him, he asked him what he was doing. He told
Mr. Moody he was employed by the Government in the
Internal Revenue Department, and that he lived with
his family in Newcastle, Pennsylvania.

^Well, you'll have to give that up," said Moody in
his abrupt, domineering way. 'T've been looking for
you eight years, and you've got to come with me."

Mr. Sankey was very much surprised at this, but he
said he would think it over. Moody at this time was
a man of power and influence. He had raised person-
ally twenty thousand dollars in subscriptions and built
the Hlinois Street Church in Chicago, which, although
conducted under the auspices of the Congregational
Church, became famous as Dwight Moody's Church.
And Mr. Sankey knew what it meant to be a Christian
worker, for, like Moody, he had been converted, just
as he saw the great evangelist converting others, by the
power of the Holy Ghost in him ; and he saw, too, that
Dwight Moody was rescuing souls. The membership

MOODY AND SANKEY 147

of the Illinois Street Church was chiefly made up of
people he had rescued from degradation.

Mr. Sankey was ready to make sacrifices for God, as
Dwight Moody was, and that was really why they were
so fond of each other. They were both pledged to be
^^at work for Jesus Christ."

Sankey's extraordinary gift of. singing hymns was not
because he had a wonderful voice or because he under-
stood music. His voice was a small one and his
knowledge of music not very great. But, whenever he
sang hymns, as he did to thousands upon thousands of
people in many cities, he seemed to be inspired. He
was able to inspire silence in the crowd, that came like
a calm after the storm of Dwight Moody's powerful
preaching. Sankey's singing went straight to the heart,
it made people think of the love of God. Some of the
lines in his hymns he sang so softly that they were more
spoken than sung. A certain class of people attended
the Moody and Sankey meetings only to hear Sankey.
It was the partnership of these two men that led to the
great revival meetings in London, in Liverpool, in fact
in all the large cities of England, Ireland, and Scot-
land.

In Scotland Mr. Sankey's '^Human Hymns" were
condemned by some. And the small cabinet organ at
which he accompanied himself was called a "Kist-o'-
Whistles." When, as sometimes happened, comedians
in the theater tried to make jokes at the expense of
Moody and Sankey, the audience hissed them.

Sankey's hymn-book was a collection of hymns he
had clipped or found from all denominations. He

148 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

also wrote the music to new words for the hymns writ-
ten by Horatius Bonar^ ''Hold the Fort, for I am Com-
ing/' and '^I Heard the Voice of Jesus." The hymn-
book which was named by Mr. Sankey, ''Sacred Songs
and Solos of Ira D. Sankey at the meetings of Mr.
Moody in Chicago/' contained only twenty-three num-
bers. It became a volume of twelve hundred songs.
They were called "Human Hymns/' because they were
different from the usual sacred songs of the day. Mr.
Sankey's own favorites were "Ninety and Nine/'
"There is a Fountain Filled with Blood/' "Jesus of
Nazareth/' and "Sweet Bye-and-Bye." The most fam-
ous of Sankey's hymns is "Abide with Me, Fast Falls
the Eventide."

While Sankey "sang the gospel/' Moody "preached
it/' and their gospel campaigns were unanimous revival
meetings. In New York, at Gilmore's Garden, they
required ^ve hundred ushers to manage the crowd, and
Mr. Sankey had a choir of twelve hundred voices.

In 1869 the Chicago fire destroyed the North Side
Tabernacle where Moody and Sankey began their per-
manent partnership in the gospel. They had lived
there together. With the help of John Wanamaker
and George H. Stuart a new church was built later,
the Chicago Avenue Church.

D wight Moody's great physical energy often tired
out every one about him. Once, on New Year's Day,
he announced that with his deacons he would make two
hundred New Year's calls on the members of his
church. Most of them lived in tenements and on top
floors. Moody started out in a bus. He would rush

MOODY AND SANKEY 149

up several flights of stairs, knock on the door, walk in
and say to the astonished members of his church, in his
abrupt way:

"I am Moody. Are you well ? Do you all come to
church ? Have you all the coal you need for the win-
ter? Let us pray!"

The prayer was short, and in a few minutes he was
out of the door, on his way to the next visit, his dea-
cons trailing after him.

Dwight Moody returned to his birthplace in North-
field, Massachusetts, and built two fine schools there,
one for boys and another for girls. His mother lived
to be ninety-one years old. She was angry with him
for being a layman preacher. Herself a Puritan, she
believed that no man could preach unless he was first
ordained. When he held his first revival meeting in
Northfield, the family hitched up the wagon to go into
town to hear him. His mother had refused to go, till
at the last minute she said, "I suppose there won't be
room in the wagon for me."

When Dwight saw his mother in the meeting, he
was troubled. When at last he asked those who felt
the power of the" Spirit in them, to rise, his mother
was the first to stand up with her head bowed, as if
asking her son's forgiveness.

He had a "passion for souls," which his mother un-
derstood at last. When later some one asked her what
she thought of her son, she said slyly:

"I always thought Dwight would be one thing or
another."

I kept this incident in Moody's life to the last, be-

150 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

cause it expresses the purpose of the lives of both these
pioneer evangelists of the world. Together they created
a new religious appeal, they being the first leaders of
revival meetings which since have spread all over the
world. In them was the spirit of the gospel, the doc-
trine of the Bible.

Moody proved that scriptural language could be
translated into an eloquence more modern in scope, and
Sankey supplemented with the spiritual meaning of a
hymn which could sing itself into the hearts of all
sorts of people, religious or not. Moody and Sankey
were the originators of a chiss of preaching and sacred
singing which was the beginning of revival meetings
as large and as soul-stirring as their own.

GROVER CLEVELAND

(1837-1908)

TWICE PRESIDENT OF THE
UNITED STATES

Courtesy of Mr. Frederick Hill Meserve

G ROVER CLEVELAND

I THS: tltW Y^HK

j^^BLlC LIBRARY

GROVER CLEVELAND

(1837-1908)

TWICE PEESIDENT OF THE
UNITED STATES

WHEKE'S Grove?" asked Deacon McVic-
car, as lie stepped from behind a barrel of
molr.sses in the country store in Eayet-
ville, a small village near Syracuse, New York.

''I see him and Howard Edwards goin' off fishin'/'
said one of the men. The same thing had happened
often before.

''He's a good boy," said McViccar, who owned the
country store where Grover Cleveland was employed,
"but he's the gosh-darndest fisherman I ever did hear
tell of."

The other men in the store laughed, and the deacon
went back behind the counter, shaking his head sadly.

The fact is that when Grover Cleveland was a coun-
try boy he and Howard Edwards were chums. How-
ard saw nothing wonderful about his pal "Grove," ex-
cept that they got along well together. They were
about the same age and size when they both lived in
the little village near Syracuse, and they played, and
often slept and ate, together. They had lots of fun
too. There was one thing about Grove, you were al-
ways sure to catch fish when you went fishing with

153

154 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHARACTEE

him, because he knew just what kind of bait to get,
how to put it on the hook, and did not get discouraged
if the fish didn't bite at once. Grove would rather fish
than eat.

He was always full of fun. The best joke he played
on the village was when he tied a long string to the
clapper of the village bell and kept it hidden. At
night the people of the village were suddenly startled
by a loud ringing of the bell, and every one rushed
out of the houses to find out who rang it; but they
never did.

Most boys who became well known men in Amer-
ican life after they grew up showed some indica-
tion that they would become famous for one thing or
another; but the only thing Grove excelled in, so far
as any one else could see, was fishing. That in itself
was not a very promising outlook. He was just a
freckled, mischievous, good-natured little country boy,
who worked for the country store in Fayetville. His
father had been pastor of the Congregational Church
of the village, and some of his brothers and sisters were
born there. Still, although he himself had been bom
in Caldwell, ISTew Jersey, everybody in Fayetville knew
him as the ^'parson's son." Every one liked him. He
was an obliging, respectful sort of boy.

While he seemed to be doing nothing but just grow-
ing up, he was, as a matter of fact, quietly learning
the most important thing in life to make a man suc-
cessful ; he was studying other men. This was not be-
cause he was planning to become President of the
United States, but because he always had a great in-

GROVER CLEVELAND 155

terest in people. There is no better place to find ont
just bow different men and women are than a country
store. Tbe whole neighborhood for miles around had
to go there to buy what they needed, and Grove was pop-
ular with them because he would listen to all their
troubles, without saying a word himself; and though he
had given them no advice, because he was too young
then to be able to do so, they went away with a feeling
that he was a smart boy because he had listened so at-
tentively, and discreetly said nothing. This was one
of Grove's greatest gifts, which later in life secured
him the friendship of men and the confidence of a
Nation.

It was not a gift Grove was conscious of. Being
one of the younger members of a family of nine chil-
dren, he was not thinking very much about himself.
He did not expect to have the advantages of his elder
brother William, and he had so many sisters to boss
over him that he was glad to be working in the store,
at another village than where they lived then. He
wasn't one of those studious boys who was always read-
ing difficult books — Grove w^asn't that sort of a boy.
He just went along quietly working for Deacon McVic-
car, and earning fifty dollars a year which he contrib-
uted to his father's large household in Clinton, New
York.

The way he went to work in the store at Fayetville
was this. His father had taken a church in Clinton,
New York, because Hamilton College and also pre-
paratory schools were there; and as he was him-
self a college graduate, having gone to Yale when

156 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

he was young, lie wanted his children to be well edu-
cated. When the family first went to Clinton, Wil-
liam, the oldest brother, went at once to Hamilton
College and studied for the ministry. Grove started in
at one of the preparatory schools. His father soon
found that the expenses of the home were too great, and
as Grove was a sturdy, dependable boy he was sent to
take a job in the country store kept by his father's old
friend, a former deacon in his church.

He remained there two years, at the end of which
time he had gained some valuable things in his life.
He had met so many different kinds of people that
he had learned to know just how to make friends with
any one at all. He did not allow his own likes and dis-
likes to influence his manner towards any one. He did
not judge people by the clothes they had on or the
education they had. He just learned to look for the
best in every one, and they liked him for it because they
knew he was fair and just to them.

Grove was the kind of boy who educated himself
along this line, unconsciously preparing himself for the
greatest possible gift of character — good judgment.
He was born in a village, and out of his village life
came those broader qualities of mind and heart that
prepared him for the difficult work of being a leader
himself. Those two years in a country store were
the most valuable training of his life.

At the end of two years he returned to Clinton and
had just begun to take up his studies at the prepara-
tory school where he had left them off, when his father
died very suddenly. He was in Utica for the day with

GROVER CLEVELAND 157

his sister when the news reached them. Of course he
went home feeling very sad, but above all he was
thoughtful. He was fifteen years old when this hap-
pened to him.

As a boy, Grove was always far ahead of his years.
He felt the burden of responsibility which his father's
sudden death brought to him. Being one of four
brothers, it was his duty to share in taking care of his
mother and sisters. His brother William had become
an instructor at the Institution for the Blind in New
York City, and he secured a place for Grove as his
assistant. The family remained at the little village
of Holland Patent where their father had moved in
search of health and had died. Of course this was
only a beginning. Grove knew very well that he had
to think about a career for himself, and having no
money, he had to decide first upon what he wanted to
be, and second, how he was going to get there.

There was one thing about Grove that made every
one, young and old, always respect him very highly;
he was modest about his own ability. Long after he
had retired from public life, after he had twice been
elected President of the United States, he never spoke
of himself as President. If a question was asked him
he always said, "When I was in Washington," he never
said, "When I was President." This was very useful
to him, this habit of being modest about himself when
every one knew he was a great man, — in fact it was
just what made him a great man.

It had been anticipated that Grove would become
a minister like his father, but his older brother Wil-

158 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

liam graduated for the ministry at Hamilton College,
and Grove thought that was enough in the family.

With another boy of about his own age, whose am-
bitions were also just beginning to develop, Grove
talked over future plans. As a lot of other bays had
done before them, they decided to start out together
on a journey in search of their fortunes. Instead of
going to the great cities to find them, however. Grove
was in favor of trying smaller places. He had been
in 'New York and had seen the hardships they might
have to meet, alone without money, in the big city.
So they decided to go west from the little village of
Holland Patent.

Having no money saved up, Grove, who had sent
all his earnings in ISTew York to his mother, realized
that it was absolutely necessary to have some before
starting away. He went to an old friend of his fa-
ther's, Honorable Ingham Townsend of Fonda, l^ew
York, who had given many young men their first start in
life, and asked him for twenty-five dollars. This was a
lot of money for two boys to start out with to make
their fortunes, but Mr. Townsend gave it willingly, tell-
ing Grove that he need never return it, but that if he
should ever meet a young man in need, as he himself
then was, he might pay the debt to that young man if
he could spare it. Many years later, when Mr. Town-
send was a very old man, he received that twenty-five
dollars back from Grover Cleveland, then Assistant
District Attorney of Erie County.

The two boys. Grove and his chum, tried to get jobs
in Utica and Syracuse, without success. It was diffi-

GROVER CLEVELAND 159

cult to decide where to go next. One place seemed
just as good as another, so Grove suggested they start
for Cleveland, Ohio. He believed that as the town
bore his name it ought to bring them good luck. Cleve-
land was a very long way from Syracuse, however, but
that didn't matter. They had no friends, no advisers,
no particular place where they were sure of work, and
very little money to last them. When they reached
Buffalo, which is on the way to Cleveland, Grove
thought he would make a call on his aunt and uncle
by marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis F. Allen. They
lived in a fine house in the suburb of Black Rock.
While he left his friend in Buffalo to wait for his
return, he walked out to his uncle's house. He told
his uncle that he was on his way to Cleveland to make
his fortune.

''Grove, what on earth are you going to Cleveland
for?" his uncle asked him.

''I think I'm going to become a lawyer, there," said
the youth quietly.

"The law business in Cleveland is very bad, I've
heard," said his uncle slowly. ''If you will stop with
us, I will try to find a place in a lawyer's office for
you here. Is any one with you?"

"Yes, one of my friends was going west to find some-
thing to do, and I was going with him. I shall have
to ask him if he will excuse me if I stop here with

you."

His obligations of friendship were always uppermost
in his character, and Grove took that long walk back
to Buffalo to explain the situation to his friend. The

160 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

latter said it would make no difference in his plans
if Grove stayed with his relatives, and so they sep-
arated.

That is how, at eighteen years old, this penniless hoy
hegan his career in Buffalo, l^ew York, to become,
thirty years later. President of the United States.

The home in which he now found himself was a
beautiful house. Black Rock was a delightful suburb,
in 1855, only two miles from the heart of the city. The
Allen homestead was the only big stone house in the
neighborhood. It had once been the residence of Gen-
eral Peter B. Porter, who had been Secretary of War in
the Cabinet of John Quincy Adams. It is quite pos-
sible that Grove, with his keen, adaptable mind, felt for
the first time, in these surroundings of historical gran-
deur, a new spur to his ambitions. Here he found a
larger library than he had ever had access to, and he
became Mr. Allen's assistant in completing a book called
the ^'American Herd Book," a work in many volumes of
which his uncle was the author. For years Mr. Allen
had prided himself upon the fine cattle he raised on a
farm at Grand Island. In the preface of the fifth
volume of the "American Herd Book," which was
published six years after Grove came to live with his
uncle, the author wrote :

"I take pleasure in expressing my acknowledg-
ment of the kindness, industry, and ability of my young
friend and kinsman, Grover Cleveland, of Buffalo, a
gentleman of the legal profession."

Mr. Allen found Grover Cleveland during these years
a young man "with quietness of intellect, a ready mind

GROVER CLEVELAND 161

that was always accurate. He was unusually prompt.
His chief recreation was fishing and shooting."

His uncle clothed him and boarded him and paid
him a return for his work on the book. He became
attached to him, and he found him a place in a law-
yer's office. Grover Cleveland's first important demon-
stration of that independence of character for which
he was conspicuous happened at this time.

^^Grover, you'd better go up and see Hibbard," his
uncle said to him one day, referring to a lawyer in
Buffalo. He went, and came back without any com-
ment. He was a high-spirited boy, and Mr. Hibbard
said something he didn't like. He got up without a
word and walked out of his office.

He began his career in the law in the office of Rogers,
Bowen and Rogers, in Buffalo, with slight if any en-
couragement from members of the firm. When his
uncle first mentioned the young man's abilities to
Mr. Rogers, the senior member, he said they didn't
want any one in the office. ''However, we like smart
boys," he added. "Anyhow, there's a table he can
start at."

That table in Mr. Rogers's office was where Grover
Cleveland began his climb to the seat of the Chief
Magistrate of the Nation.

The first morning that young Cleveland sat down at
the empty table, Mr. Rogers took up a copy of Black-
stone and put it on the table in front of him.

"That's where they all begin," he said to the young
man. Cleveland walked the two miles back and forth
from his uncle's house to the office every day, arriving

162 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

punctually at nine o'clock in the morning, no matter
what the weather might be. After he had been there
some time, his uncle asked him about his work.

"How are you getting along at the office, Grover?''

"Pretty well, sir ; only they don't tel] me anything,"
he replied. The young man used his brains and
found out everything for himself. From boyhood till
he was a man Grover Cleveland worked for wages,
and earned them. When he was twenty-three he had
given just four years of study and preparation to pass
the examination that admitted him to the bar.

It was during the four years that followed, in which
Grover Cleveland remained with the same firm of
lawyers, that he gradually established that trait in
his character which dominated his official acts in
Washington, — intellectual integrity. In other words,
he would never express an opinion until he knew
thoroughly all the facts, then he would arrive at a
conclusion for himself that no one could alter.

What he was as a boy, he became as a man, unpre-
tentious. It is well known that he was an able law-
yer, and yet he would never make any show of his
ability, as other lawyers did, to get ahead. He ac-
cepted no social engagements in Buffalo that might
have helped him. He couldn't do a thing that he did
not sincerely believe in, and society was something he
never cared for. JSTor could he ever declare himself
a man eligible for any office. His first public appoint-
ment was made for him by his fellow lawyers in Buf-
falo, who offered him the post of Assistant District
Attorney of Erie County, when he was only twenty-

GROVER CLEVELAND 163

six years of age. This was in 1863, the time of the
Civil War.

To him came a test of character at this time which
he met with characteristic self-sacrifice. His two
brothers were already in the Union Army, when, just
after his appointment as Assistant District Attorney, he
was drafted. In weighing his duty to the Government
as a prosecuting officer and his duty to take care of his
mother and sisters, he decided to send a substitute in
his place, which enabled him to become the main sup-
port of the family.

He was nominated by the Democratic State Conven-
tion in 1865, after three years' service, for District At-
torney of Erie County, which he accepted only on con-
dition that he would not be required to do any personal
canvassing. He showed no political temperament then.
Because he never sought the promotions in public life
which came to him so rapidly, Mr. Cleveland was al-
ways regarded as a lucky man in his elections. His
record is easily analyzed. It is founded upon his faith-
ful administration of Buffalo when he was Mayor of
that city; upon his square, honest administration as
Governor of the State ; upon the respect and affection in
which he was held by troops of friends when he was
President of the United States; and upon the fear in
which speculators, money rings, and other enemies of
good government held him.

"Admit at once any one who asks to see the Gover-
nor," he said as he took his seat in the Executive Cham-
ber in Albany, and thereby established his position in
politics as a reformer who believed in open doors and

164 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

no secrets. His record as Governor of N'ew York be-
came a I^ational symbol of the kind of man the people
wanted in the White House.

At the ceremonies in Buffalo in the Executive Man-
sion he was introduced to the crowd as the next Presi-
dent of the United States. He was nominated and
elected to the White House in 1884. Defeated for a
second term, he was reelected in 1892 and found himself
in the White House again in 1893. Through long per-
iods of bitter personal attacks directed against him by
his political enemies, Mr. Cleveland retained the confi-
dence and personal esteem of loyal, strong and dis-
inguished friends.

The largest influence in his public career that lifted
him into victory always was his understanding friend-
ship. He was incapable of violating it, of betraying
it, of accepting it unless he could give it whole heart-
edly in return. He was dra^\^l into many complicated
political traps to entangle his honor, but he remained
calm and patient through them all. His energy for
work was untiring. It was his custom in the White
House to keep his light burning till three in the morn-
ing, and to be in his oflSce at nine. He had not only
great physical endurance, but he was unpretentious
about it as also about any self-assertion except in his
official capacity.

He was a loyal friend, a fearless administrator and
a great President, who held the admiration of his
political party and the ^NTation, until his death in 1908,
at Princeton, I^. J., where he lived with his family, in
retirement, after he left the White House.

JOHN BURROUGHS

(1837-1921)

AMERICA'S GREAT NATURALIST

JOHN BURROUGHS

I'in-

JOHN BURROUGHS

(1837-1921)

/f>/

AMERICANS GREAT NATURALIST

AMA;N^ born in 1837 who traveled far into the
strange environment of this twentieth century
brought to it the wisdom and sanity of our fore-
fathers. He never really grew up, because at the more
or less serious age of eighty-three he was still poking
about in meadow grass to find the nest of some shy
young song-sparrow or learning without much success to
paddle a boat up a stream. But in his case it was
a good thing that he didn't grow up, because he wrote
beautiful and inspiring thoughts about birds and ani-
mals and insects and, flowery that will make his name,
John Burroughs, a healing, soothing, sane influence for
many generations to follow.

There are not many youthful pictures of this open-
air philosopher, so that he goes down to posterity ap-
pearing to us just as he did to a little girl who insisted
he must be — Santa Claus ; a slim, smallish, compact,
active man with long white beard, gentle brown eyes,
and a general impulse of merriment. Like Santa
Claus, his disposition of dropping at our door such gifts
of nature-lore as he had gathered along his outdoor
path of many years has made him known all over the
world. People like to read John Burroughs's books,

167

168 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHARACTER

because he gives them not merely literary quality but
something useful in their daily lives.

John Burroughs became a naturalist by force of cir-
cumstances. His nursery was in the woods, not the
pretty fenced-in picnic woods of to-day, but the real
forests where all sorts of birds and animals lived and
where, like the birds and animals, white men and
women made the best of it. His son, Julian Bur-
roughs, a graduate of Harvard, recalls his father's
account of his boyhood in Roxbury, where, the seventh
son of a large family, he lived in a house literally
hewn and furnished from the forest by his father.

"Ah ! my boy,'' writes the son, quoting his father's
reminiscent account of his boyhood, "you never wore
cowhide boots or a homespun shirt, you don't know
what discomfort is. The boots were made by the vil-
lage shoemaker; stiff, heavy things that froze on our
feet. Often on mornings in cold weather when we
got to school we would sit around the stove and cry
while our boots thawed out; and at night, when we
pulled them off, the skin- would come too. It always
took two of us to get them on in the morning and some-
times three to get them off. Hiram [his brother]
would get over us small boys and take hold of the
boot-straps over our shoulders and we would pull, too,
and kick with might and main, and at last on would
come the boot. Father used to grease them with tal-
low and lampblack; that softened them a little. The
homespun shirts, when new, almost took the skin off
your back. They were harsh and of a yellow color at
first, but with wear and many washings they grew

JOHN BUKEOUGHS 169

softer and of a gray white. "We raised the flax our-
selves, planting a small piece every year; we rottled,
swingled, and hatcheled it ourselves and the womenfolk
would spin and weave it and make it up into our
clothes."

^ Who to-day understands the process of turning flax
into clothes ; what is the meaning of such obsolete words
as "rottled, swingled, and hatcheled'^ ? And yet these
were the foundations of John Burroughs's education,
the earthbound sources of the gentle naturalist's wis-
dom. He remembers all the now forgotten factors of
life in those days^of pioneer simplicity. His father
grew the family's own wool, washing and shearing the
sheep, carding and spinning the wool. The women
then took it in hand on their looms and made clothes
and blankets of it.

^^I remember hearing the buzz of the loom as they
wove the woolen cloth on long drowsy summer after-
noons,'' says John Burroughs. ^^Mother made dyes and
dyed the yarn herself^ a soft, unfading blue."

Pillows and beds were stuffed with feathers taken
from the geese. Mittens and socks were knit from- the
wool taken from the sheep. The kitchen and living
room were lighted at night by tallow dips, "which
mother made." It was the only light they had, and
there was always "a box full of them on the attic stairs."

The author's father, like other farmei's of his period,
never bought anything. Everything they needed was
produced on the farm. With obvious pride in his
brother Hiram, John Burroughs has told how expert
he was in making ax-handles, ox-yokes, rye cradles,

170 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

wood sleds. All shingles for the house or barn were
home-made, as well as window and door frames, boxes,
chests, window sashes. Nails were sparsely used, since
iron nails were also hand made and expensive because
of the iron in them. The boys of John Burroughs's
boyhood made their own toys and school things such
as inkwells, copy books, pens, slate pencils, and even
string.

^'We got a soft slate stone and whittled it into
slate pencils," John Burroughs tells us. ^'We made our
inkwells by casting them from lead about a cylinder
of wet, soft wood wrapped in wet paper, digging the
wood out afterwards. String we made out of tow, our
trout lines we painstakingly braided from horsehair."
Of course they made kites, and once, says John, "1
tied a meadow mouse on a kite to send him aloft,
thinking it would be a fine thing to let such a lowly
creature see the world. He came down none the worse
for his trip, blinking his beady eyes."

With his grandfather, the boy went trout-fishing,,
and became a master-hand with the rod. ^^He was a
great fisherman, was grandfather, he was able to tire
me out when he was over ninety. He taught me to
believe in spooks, and ghosts, and witches." The spirit
of his boyhood, his vision of all outdoors, has ever
been before his eyes. There was a transition period,
between the real boyhood in the rough and ready pio-
neer days in Delaware County, and the other boyhood
renewed so merrily in the boy's life of his son, Julian.
In him he lived his boyhood, over again, frequently
puzzled, amused, or disgusted with the progressive habits

JOHN BURROUGHS 171

of the boys of the twentieth century. That inter-
esting period was from 1863 to 1874, his maturity,
spent as a Government employee in Washington in the
Currency Department and subsequently as a bank ex-
aminer. Of these dull incidents in his life there is
nothing to write of John Burroughs, the disciple of out-
doors, the author of impressions and texts taken from
the sky, the trees, the mountains, the woods, the
streams and all that belong to them. At the age of
^hi^ty;-six he returned to the activities of youth and
bought land on a farm near West Port, N. Y. The
land sloped to the edge of the Hudson River, and
the house was built of stone with a finish of timber.
John Burroughs hunted for the stone, helped dig it out
and selected the choicest trees on the mountains. But
the Hudson didn't belong in his vision of that first boy-
hood, and of course not at all in his second boyhood.
There was no recollection of such a great arm of the sea,
it didn't fit into the perspective of rugged streams and
mountain waterfalls. He expected much, however, of
this house because of its proximity to the great river.
He bought a sail boat which created a never ending-
source of amusing memories to Mrs. Burroughs, who
often related how, after he was swindled in buying this
boat, and it was stolen, and recovered, and borrowed,
and neglected, till it became mildewed and the oars
were lost and broken, she rescued a small piece of can-
vas, a remnant of the sail, and used it as a foot mat to
catch the crumbs under baby Julian's chair.

"Oh! yes," the author would say on the matter of
the lost sail boat, "when I came here to live I thought

172 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

I would spend half mj time on the river, having great
fun, but very soon I lost all interest in it."

In the nineties, even, John Burroughs had gone back
to the boyhood of the forties. He was not aware that
when the trains which he could see across the Hudson
stopped, it was because a block system controlled them.
He had not noticed the procession of barges which were
towed at night up the river. He had so trained his
senses, however, that he could hear a drumming grouse
in the breathless silence of the woods while those with
him could not. He could identify a new bird note
from the confused concert of bird-song, the new arrival
in spring, though he might not have heard it for years.
Birds' nests were as obvious to his keen sight as he
went through the woods, as lampposts are to the city
dweller. His eyes and ears were long trained to in-
terpret sounds and sights almost hidden to us. The
ease with which he could find a four-leaf clover was
not luck but simply a training of the eyes to see them.
It was a training which had been forced upon him in
those early days of pioneer struggle in the woods of
Delaware County. The traits of his boyhood returned
to him increased by maturity of thought. His vision
had broadened with the years; he saw at a glance all
that there was outdoors because he loved it all so deeply.

His education had been of the elementary country
school, and yet he became an author of fine literary
feeling and skill. It was a constant source of delight
to him, when his friends wondered how he had so
quickly acquired the gift of writing, to inform them
ihat he was brought up on a farm.

JOHN BURROUGHS 173

^^Best of all, I was a farm boy/' he would say,
'^Drought up on the farm, and I had it in my blood, I
guess."

He was as much a part of the woods as the creatures
that lived in it; he could see as far, hear as keenly,
interpret the language of the forest as well. He went
to Nature for literary material because he loved to do
so, and he wrote of it all because he loved it, loved to
live it all over again in the telling.

/ "In writing of a day afield," he once said, "I lived
over again that day, tasting again the joys of all that I
had experienced, and trying to make it possible for
others to experience that joy also."
"^ The.^ejnote of his work was his love of Nature, and
out of this wholesome sympathy and knowledge came
a sympathy for good literature gained by reading good .
books.; His vision was almost as keen in browsing
among books that held some useful secret for him as it
was digging into the mysteries of Nature.

"There is but one way to learn, to write," he once
said, "and that is to write — if you only want to write
hard enough you will learn. For years I steeped my-
self in Emerson, I had my being, I lived and thought
in Emerson, until when I began to write for myself,
everything that I wrote had an Emersonian flavor. . . .
Emerson was my college, my textbooks."

Writing was as much a study of craftsmanship to
John Burroughs the author, as mowing, or planting,
or plowing was to him as a farmer. No one could
swing a scythe with more skill, even when he was
seventy, and it was his boast that no hired man could

174 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHAEACTER

mow so well or so rapidly. But his fever for books
began when he was a boy and he asked his father for
money to buy an algebra. His father did not know
whether an algebra was a book or a new toy. He re-
fused at first, but when later he offered to buy the
book, the boy's blood was up and he decided to be inde-
pendent and get it himseK. He raised the money by
tapping the maple trees early in the spring for the first
sugar sap. This he boiled on the kitchen stove, and
making some small cakes of very fine white sugar,
he peddled them in the village. He often recalled with
pride how one year he earned ''three dollars, all in silver,
and I bought a little double-barreled shotgun, a crude,
weak little thing made by some country blacksmith,
but it gave me untold delight and made me envied by
every boy in Roxbury. One barrel was bigger than the
other and one was not straight, yet sometimes it would
go off, and I killed gray squirrels, rabbits, and some
partridges with it. I wish I had it now."

When John Burroughs was seventeen he taught in
a country school and with his earnings bought the books
that were the influences of his career. Often h^trudge^
home with them mJles over the mountains on an empty
stomach, because he didn't have enough money left over
to pay fares or buy supper. These books were kept by
the author till he was an old man. Sometimes he would
open one of these books bought in his early boyhood,
and gently turn over the pages that inspired his author-
ship later on. Locke's essay on the ''Human Under-
standing" was one of these books purchased in his teens.
Books were the outstanding milestones of his life. He

JOHN BUEEOUGHS 175

said to his son, one day, thinking no douht of the rela-
tion of books to his boyhood :

'^And once when some one gave father one of my
books, they say that as he took it in his hands tears
came into his eyes."

In the ^d^hties, he started an industry apart from
authorship, that of raising Delaware grapes. His wife,
Ursula IvTorth, whom he married when he was about
twenty, was his boon companion in this as in all his
ventures. His health had been failing, but it was com-
pletely restored by the outdoors and the exercise of this
undertaking. For years the grape farm supplied a
good revenue, then a blight of birds came, especially
orioles, and destroyed the crop.

The author built himself a rustic, bark-covered study /
just beyond the house at ^^Eiverby," on the top of the'
hill and there for many years he did most of his writing. /
In cold weather he split firev/ood, carrying it in himself, '
with the comment that it gave him double heat. Most
of the furniture for the house and study was made by \
the author, made entirely by hand from the rugged
native oak. Some of the pieces he carved and deco-
rated.

There were three ^^homes" which John Burroughs
built, — the house overlooking the Hudson, ^^Eiverby" ;
the house intentionally built where the Hudson could
not be seen, "Slabsides" ; and ''Woodchuck" built on
the site of his boyhood home at Eoxbury.

The list of his books is a long one. His stories of
the outdoor inhabitants he studied and lived with so
many years are full of philosophies and straightfor-

176 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

ward hints to tlie inner lives of men. While he appears
to have spent a great deal of his time interviewing birds,
or woodchucks or squirrels, he must have seen out of
the corner of his eye many other things, complicated
things in the character of men, for his writings indicate
an^uncanny wisdom, a keen sympathy with his fellow-
man. He preferred the society of plain people who had
something to say, to that of grand people who just were
fine to look at. He enjoyed the friendship of the leaders
among all classes of men. The late Theodore Roose-
velt was one of his fellow campers.

, At sixty: he writes his boy Julian, who is away at
Harvard, a letter that shows just how deep, and kind,
and humble a man John Burroughs was :

November, 1897
Dear JuUan — If you look westward now across New Eng-
land, about seven o'clock in the evening, you will see a light
again in my study window — a dim light there on the bank of
the gTeat river — dim even to the eye of faith. If your eye is
sharp enough you will see me sitting there by my lamp, nib-
bling at books and papers, or dozing in my chair, or wrapped
in deep meditation. If you could penetrate my mind you
would see that I am often thinking of you and wondering
how your life is going at Harvard and what fortune has in
store for you. I found my path from the study grass-grown,
obliterated. It made me sad. Soon, soon, I said, all the
paths I have made in this world will be overgrown, neglected.
I hope you may keep some of them open. The paths I have
made in literature, I hope you may keep open and make
others of your own. . . ."

The dominant force of John Burrousrhs's character
was humility, v/^^.

HENBY CABOT LODGE

(1850 )

DEFENDER OF THE CONSTITUTION

Copyright by Harris & Ewing

HENRY CABOT LODGE

I'HS ^fEW YiKK
PUBLIC LIBKA8Y

riLDEN POUNDATIQl

HENEY CABOT LODGE

(1850 )

DEFENDER OF THE CONSTITUTION

THE disadvantages of culture to a political career
have been acknowledged by politicians them-
selves. For some more or less obvious reasons,
culture has been looked upon with suspicion by political
masters, but the study of politics as a science has not
been convincingly written. There is a general im-
pression that it does not lend itself to scientific control.
The rise of Henry Cabot Lodge from the remote obscur-
ity of culture to the leadership of the Republican Party
in the Senate, is therefore a singular triumph over such
handicaps as literary tastes impose on political life.

Senator Lodge is a human symbol of New England
integrity of thought and action, as well as a dis-
ting-uished example of its cultured inheritance. He is
an inspiring combination of Harvard and politics.

In his slim, alert, commanding stature is reflected the
historic democracy of Xew England at its best. He
represents no one-sided traditions, his literary accom-
plishments as a historian and writer are supplemented
with an interest in American politics that suggests those
dual traits in the Puritan ancestors which made them
attend church with a loaded musket in one hand and a

179

180 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

prajer-book in the other. Of course, in those pre-Revo-
lution days the musket was a defensive weapon.
There were Indians who refused to live in peace with
the white settlers, consequently the musket was neces-
sary in a practical persuasion of objectionable policies.
Mr. Lodge has not actually carried a musket in his
political affairs for the Nation, but it has been gener-
ally conceded among his political enemies that he is
exceptionally well armed in case of surprise. There
is a gentleness about the cultured Bostonian that de-
mands respect, but his culture is misleading in that he
also possesses that l^ew England faculty for rock-bound
principles of opinion, political or otherwise, that he will
not yield.

The Cabots, of the pioneer leading families in 'New
England, have been at the head of the social and cul-
tured life of Boston for generations. The first his-
torical work Mr. Lodge wrote was the ^Tife and Letters
of George Cabot," perhaps his best book.
' 'George Cabot was one of the first Senators from
Massachusetts under President Adams. This was dur-
ing the stormy period of construction in 1800-1815
and the States Rights movement had just begun, when
the Federalist Party was in the political field. Sena-
tor Henry Cabot Lodge inherits the principles of
ISTational character which his ancestors brought with
them from England, an ideal of self-government which
was crystallized in the Constitution. Anything that
stands in the way of American independence, of equal
rights, is instinctively, inherently objectionable to him.
Even in boyhood he took into his own hands any issue

HENRY CABOT LODGE 181

that deprived him of personal liberty, as the following
anecdote implies :

People passing the spacious grounds of a house that
stood at the corner of Sumner and Winthrop Streets in
Boston, on a certain day in 1855, would have seen a
group of little boys playing tag over the grass. The
lilac bushes were heavy with white fragrant blossoms,
the birds were singing their loudest, and altogether it
was a peaceful, joyous scene. The great trees almost
hid the big stone house which stood far back from the
street. It was one of the first houses in Boston, and
was owned by Mr. Henry Cabot, head of one of the
best families in New England. His son-in-law, Mr.
John E. Lodge, and Mrs. Lodge, Cabot's daughter, lived
there too. Among the boys running about the private
grounds was their son, Henry Cabot Lodge, who had
been born in the big house.

On the side of the house, in the middle of a lawn,
stood the statue of a nymph. It was a great deal in
the way when there were many boys playing on the
grounds, and besides it was rather old and dilapidated.
Boys don't usually care much about statues, especially
when they are in the way and no longer new. Sud-
denly Cabot said to the others,

"Let's push it over."

No sooner said than done. They all seized the old
statue and pushed it off the pedestal. It fell to the
ground, and only the soft turf saved it from breaking
into little pieces. They all ran out of the gate, and
Cabot with them.

Soon afterwards Cabot's grandfather said to him :

182 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

^^Look at that big boy, ^Ye years old, and he can't
read yet."

The boy had been reproved for pushing down the
statue and perhaps it quickened his going to school
which happened the following winter.

The school selected for the boy was conducted by a
Mrs. Parkman. Her connections with Puritan origin
had been examined and found to be of the best, so the
good people of Boston sent their sons there to come un-
der an important influence of their lives. She was very
highly trusted for her discretion, her perception of
character, and her ability to arouse the intellectual
faculties of very young boys. It was a private school,
an extension of the classes she held for the education
of her own son.

Like the average boy, he did not regard Mrs. Parkman
with anything but the average annoyance that a school
teacher causes most boys. Only years later, after he
was married, did he renew her acquaintance and
recognize her delightful gifts. The chief thing Mrs.
Parkman did for Cabot was to exercise his mind, for
her invariable advice to her pupils in class was this:

^Use your mind. I don't care what you answer,
if you only use your mind." Apparently, Cabot did
this, to the disgust of some of his schoolmates, for he
discovered one day, that he was known to them as
"a miserable little dig," which meant that he was a
hard worker at school, the kind of a boy who was al-
ways "digging" instead of "playing." This was noth-
ing a hasty opinion, however, for Cabot soon found
that he could learn very easily and so have more time

HENRY CABOT LODGE 183

for enjoyment. He never liked school, and even in
the later years of his life, he did not believe in it.

^^That talk about one's happy school-days is a fal-
lacy," he wrote, remembering them when he was a
Senator. One of his classmates summed up the prin-
cipal advantage of his education when he wrote him:

"After all, we were pretty well educated ; we learned
to swim and ride, to box and fence, and handle a boat."
Still, the education of a boy in Boston was never com-
plete unless he was graduated from Harvard, and that
could not be done without accumulating a depth of
culture that stayed with the vounj? man all his life.

Henry Cabot Lodge was fortunate as a boy in his
environment. His grandfather Henry Cabot was one
of the leading men of the day, an aristocrat in blood
with a patriotic sympathy for the democratic future of
America. His father was one of the wealthy shipping
merchants of Boston, building many of his own ships
in the Medford ship yards and sending them from
Boston around the world. Among Mr. Lodge's earli-
est recollections were these ships which he could see
from the window of his father's office which was at
the very end of Commercial Wharf. They were the
graceful, beautifully modeled clipper ships that were
soon replaced by big steamers. Even their names
inspired the boy's imagination with the adventure they
suggested. They were called Argonaut, Kremlin,
Storm Kiiig, The Cossach and two were named 'after
a favorite book of his father, Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza.

It was a fad amons^ the bovs of his set to collect

184 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

stamps, and they used to gather on the wharf when a
ship came in from the Orient, and try to buy foreign
stamps from the sailors. They were careless, however,
and rarely saved their stamps. Still it was an excuse
to go down and ask questions about the strange places
where the sailors had been.

It might have been that the boy would have grown
up to be a shipping merchant like his father, for he
loved the sea, though he never 'Vent to sea" in the
sense of running away on a ship as some boys did
who afterwards became famous. He could stand for
an hour at the window of his father's office and look
out over the harbor, imagining what it must be like, far
away, on the other side of the ocean. The sea always
has been the most fascinating place to him.

The winters in Boston were not so pleasant as the
summers, because then the family moved to ISTahant, the
fashionable summer resort of Boston. Here, when
he was a boy, Cabot Lodge shared the superstition that
Captain Kidd had buried his treasure along that coast,
and he discovered a cave full of mystery. There was
only a crack through which he could see inside, but when
he looked there, it was pitch dark. He used to tease
his companions by telling them that he had found a
secret entrance, and then he described the wonderful
things he saw inside. Once he found an old musket
and told the boys he had managed to get it out of the
mysterious cave, but one of the boys told his father
and his father said the musket probably belonged in
some attic. After that he gave up these imaginary
visits to the cave.

HENRY CABOT LODGE 185

He loved the sea, swimming in it, then lying on the
hot rocks in the sun till he was brown as an Indian.
He was given a sail boat when he was thirteen and un-
der the direction of a boatman learned to sail it him-
self. One day he and a companion managed to slip
away from the wharf without the boatman, and were
tacking across the bay when a big schooner yacht,
The Idler, came skimming in from the ocean. The
sails of the big yacht took the wind out of the small
sail of his own boat, and he and the other boy found
themselves suddenly losing way, unable to get out of
the course of the large boat. A man on the big yacht
rushed to the bow, and yelled to them: '^Jump over-
board!" Believing that he knew best what to do, they
obeyed and jumped into the w^ater. "While Cabot was
jumping down, he wondered if he would come up right
under the yacht, but he didn't. He came to the sur-
face just alongside and was picked up. His little
boat was pushed out of the way and was afterwards
towed in shore. His friend, Frank Chadwick, was
saved by jumping into the water too, because he could
swim. He and Russell Sullivan, afterwards a well
kno\\m author, were together a great deal, especially
at the theater. They usually went to minstrel shows.
The first great play Cabot saw was ^'Julius Csesar" to
which he went because his grandfather, Henry Cabot,
insisted that it was necessary he should. So he went
and saw four great actors at once: E. L. Davenport,
Edwin Booth, Lawerence Barrett and John McCul-
lough. The play he and Russell Sullivan liked best was
"Colleen Bawn," an Irish play. Cabot was so im-

186 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

pressed with it that he wrote a version of it and gave
a performance in his house for some boys and the
servants. The theater in those days was not considered
a very good place to go.

''^ His reading at this time was the novels of Mayne
Reid, the 'Arabian Nights/' the ''Swiss Family Robin-
son," "Tanglewood Tales/' and the stories of Charles
Dickens, Washington Irving, and Captain Marryat.
He was particularly fond of Homeric poetry and es-
pecially of Scott's "The Lady of the Lake," and then
on the sly he read Beadles' dime-novels, the first yellow-
back thrillers published. They were really very harm-
less and full of adventure, but atrociously written and
without any art. And, of course he went to church,
but he made an agreement with his mother to let him
read his Bible during the sermon so that he would not
fall asleep, and she agreed.

- He went from Mrs. Parkman's school to another
school kept by Mr. Dixwell. He was about eleven
years old then, and in that year his father died very
suddenly. This was when the country was very much
disturbed over the slave question, and he had heard
his father talking against the South which wanted to
keep the blacks in slavery. His father was called a
black Republican as were all Republicans who wanted
to have the slaves freed. That's what Abraham Lin-
coln was called before he became President. The boy
naturally became a black Republican too. All boys
of his age were necessarily excited by the slave ques-
tion, which brought about the secession of so many
Southern States, and finally the Civil War. There

HENRY CABOT LODGE 187

were constant excitement and restlessness in the coun-
try, so that when he was eleven years old, Henry Cabot
Lodge became a very solid Republican. He did not
know then that he would become the leader of the
Republican Party in the United States Senate ; but he
was decided enough then to be so, if he had been old
enough.

Among the most vivid memories of the boy was the
great torchlight procession in Boston just before the
election in 1860. The Common was filled with ilash-
ino; lio-hts and thousands of vouno' men marched with
torches. They were known as the ''Wide-awakes/' and
many of them went later to the war with muskets on
their shoulders. These were the pioneers of the many
other political parades he saw in after life, though he
once said that he hoped the time would come when
people would think more and shout less over their
political celebrations. He always remembered that the
first blood of the Civil War was spilled by the Sixth
Regiment of Massachusetts, which, while passing
through Baltimore on its way to Washington, was
mobbed and had to fight its way through the streets to
the depot where many soldiers were killed.

The influence of the Civil War excited his feeling,
which was always deeply attached to the Government
of the United States, and strengthened his political
views that the Republican Party was the only one
capable of maintaining law and order in the country.
If this had not happened, he would have become a
dreamer, a cultured man of letters only, instead of a
political power in the country. He had an optimism

188 FAMOUS LEADERS OP CHARACTER

about America when a boy, a belief that the issue of
the Civil War would strengthen the United States
Government, and it did. His Republican s}Tiipathies
were inspired by the policies of Lincoln. He fully ex-
pected to join the army, for it looked as though the
Civil War would last till he was old enough. But it
didn't.

When he was sixteen he made his first trip to
Europe in a side-wheel steamer called the Africa.
He went with his mother and sister and a tutor who
was engaged to teach him while they traveled. This
was the son of Rear-Admiral Davis, Constant Davis, a
Harvard graduate, who Vv^ielded a great influence on
his character. He was an inspiring companion as well
as a cultured teacher.

At Harvard, which he entered when he was seven-
teen, Henry Cabot Lodge found himself in a period of
Harvard's reconstruction. A new era of education be-
gan at that time, which changed the old college system
of its President, Thomas Hill, and brought about the
appointment of Dr. Eliot in that capacity. Dr. Eliot
favored a modern university system, whereas Dr. Hill
clung to the old traditions. Cabot Lodge was the last
student to read the "mock parts," a satire on the Ex-
hibitor classes. His few years at Harvard developed
his inclination to be a scholar, especially a writer.
The most important influence on his character was the
course in English Literature with Professor James
Russell Lowell, and another more difiicult one in med-
iaeval History with Henry Adams. His amusements
were sparring, single-stick exercises, and broadsword

HENRY CABOT LODGE 189

practice and he was very popular in the dramatic
societies. Mr. Lodge is remembered for his perform-
ance of a Yorkshireman in a comedy. He became a
member of the old and well-known Hasty Pudding Club
of Harv^ard. It was then the custom among students to
pay for the privilege of being '^supers" in grand opera,
so as to get behind the scenes. On one occasion he
assisted in carrying off one of the characters who was
supposed to be dead, and they lifted the poor man so
strenuously that they almost- tore him apart. College
"supers" were privileged, however, and they had their
way of getting fun out of the ^'job."
s^ Immediately after his graduation, in fact the follow-
ing day, he married the sister of his tutor. Miss Davis.
They went to Europe on their honeymoon and saw
Paris in ruins just after the Franco-German War.

At twenty-two he seems to have lost his political fire
in literary ambition, for on his return from Europe he
was advised by Henry Adams to devote himself to his-
torical books. This meant a great deal of hard re-
search work. He stuck to the tiresome job, working
just as hard as necessity compelled him. In addition
he took a course at the Hai*vard Law School. He
never intended to practice law, though he was admitted
to the bar in Boston, and spent a year in the office of
the brother of Associate Justice of Supreme Court
Grey.

"There is nothing better than the law for mental
training,", Ee'said once.

"'One day Henry Adams, who had become editor of
the North American Review, offered him a place

190 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

on the staff as associate editor. Cabot Lodge has said
that no honor that came to him in after life was so im-
portant as this one.

^^Come to think of it/' he said in after years, "I
received no pay, but I was glad to have the place, be-
cause it gave me a chance to do literary work, and I was
glad of the opportunity."
^A Henry Adams became his mentor in literature, and
advised him to study Swift for simplicity of style.
The first article he had printed in the magazine was a
review of a book and he rewrote it eight times. It
was three years before he saw a long article of his
printed in the North American Revieiv, — an essay
on the life of Alexander Hamilton. He thought at
this time that he would become a historian, almost de-
ciding to make literature his career. His first book,
printed when he was twenty-seven, was "Life and Let-
ters of George Cabot.'' This was the story of his great-
grandfather who was a Senator and was offered
the appointment of Secretary of the ISTavy in the Cab-
inet of John Adams, which he declined. Then followed
"A Short History of the English Colonies of America."
The book was made up of written lectures delivered
at the Lowell Institute in Boston. In six years' time
appeared four exhaustive historical works, including
^The Life of Washington" in two volumes, and the
"Life of Alexander Hamilton" in one volume.

Such is the record of literary industry and achieve-
ment which has established Henry Cabot Lodge as a
historian of note. Since then, despite his active career
in political life, he has written other books and many

HENRY CABOT LODGE 191

magazine articles of distinction and great literar;)^
charni. ^^'^-■

From his college days Mr. Lodge was "in politics."
Political life and pnblic issues, challenged his well
trained mind. Though a student and a writer, he was
never a hook-worm. He absorbed to give out to
others.

Two terms he served in the Massachusetts State
Legislature; was defeated for the Senate, but took up
political activity against Benjamin Butler, when the
"Greenbacker" ran for Governor in 1883. Mr. Lodge
was sent to the Chicago Republican National Convention
in 1884 where he began his close political and literary
friendship with Theodore Roosevelt, who was nine
years after him at Harvard, and was a delegate from
New York to the convention. He was elected to the
House of Representatives, and soon after to the United
States Senate. He has been in the United States
Senate since 1893, and was placed in nomination for
the Presidency by Theodore Roosevelt in 1916. Al-
ways a forceful figT.re in the Senate, his speeches are
models of elegance of diction, abounding in historic
lore. The signal triumph of his career as a Senator
was his long fight for the historic policy of the United
States against foreign entanglement, which led to the
defeat of the League of Nations in the L^nited States
Senate and the downfall of Woodrow Wilson's political
life. u- ^" "

WOODROW WILSON
(1856 )

EDUCATOR — WAR PRESIDENT
STATESMAN

Copyripht by Tlarri? >.^ T" ■ 'n_'

WOODROW WILSON

i'UBUC LIBRARY

ASTOn, LENOX
ITILDEN FOUNDA

ti

WOODROW WILSON

(1856 )

EDUCATOR — WAR PRESIDENT —
STATESMAN

WOODROW WILSON in 1922, with a con-
temporaneous vision of his brilliant life be-
fore us, seems to have reached a place in
American history that entitles him to comparison with
the great leaders of national crises that have gone be-
fore. He emerges from the mists of political jealousy
and private hatreds, with which his public life was em-
bittered, beyond the rocks. Future generations can be
relied upon to show him such honor and respect as his
public service to the Nation deserves, the credit due all
men who have tried to meet the issues of their time with
progressive intellectuality, with personal courage. If
this sketch were written a hundred years from now,
one could say that what Washington did for the free-
dom of the Colonies, Wilson did for the intellectual
freedom of his country. But, to-day, we are still in the
scorching heat of political passions that surrounded
him, that will not cool long enough for non-partisan
opinion. He stands to-day, however, as the man who
projected a great vision of National idealism embodied
in the purposes of the League of Nations; as a great

orator, as an intellectual leader of new principles in-

195

196 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

volving our international obligations. The best one
can do in this handicap of the present-day oblique
vision on the public life of Woodrow Wilson, is to set
down these intimate biographical facts, that in their
smallest details will grow large in the magnifying
process of posterity.

There are three decades, three periodic degrees of
experience, in President Wilson's life that are distinct
and separate. These are the boyhood days, that might
be those of any American boy; the college days, when
he adopted the profession of teaching and became the
foremost educator and leader at the head of a great
university; and the distinguished culmination of all
preceding years — the days which brought him to the
highest office in the land, not once, but twice. Those
who found fault with him because he indulged in sud-
den inconsistencies of act and word during the up-
heaval of world conditions through which he main-
tained a conspicuous leadership, overlook the fact that
Mr. Wilson was not a product of the colonial period,
but a man riding always on the high wave of modern
tides that change swiftly, suddenly. Stubbornness
would have engulfed him; his struggle was not
against public opinion, but with it. His expert
foresight compelled him to reverse his position as a
strong swimmer is watchful of new currents in deep
waters. The slogan of his political enemies, ^'He kept
us out of war," was the hope for a world-peace deep in
him, but when ISTational honor demanded, he accepted
the inevitable challenge of war.

He was born on the edge of the Civil War, and there

WOODEOW. WILSON 197

was branded in his impressionable childish years a hor-
ror of war.

Seated on the gate-post of an old-fashioned red brick
house on one of the shaded streets of a sleepy Southern
town, Staunton, Virginia, where he was bom, the fu-
ture War-President of the greatest war the world has
ever known noticed two men, strangers in town, com-
ing along the street. The men paid no attention to
him, and as he sat there, his legs dangling, they stopped
suddenly. One of the men, sticking his fist in the
face of the other, said :

"Lincoln will be elected; when he is, we'll have
war."

The boy, knowing what war meant and realizing
from the excited, violent way in which the man spoke,
that it must be something terrible, something that he
wanted to know more about, dashed into the house
and went straight to his father, to ask him what the
men meant.

Whenever there was anything he wanted to know, he
went to his father, who was always ready to tell him
anything, and always knew the answer.

"Tommy," his father said to him, "Mr. Lincoln wants
us in the South to free the slaves, and he will send
the soldiers down here to make us do it. We shall
have to defend ourselves, and that will make a civil
war. Now run along, and let me work on my ser-
mon."

Tommy went down stairs again, sternly, thinking
hard, trying to imagine what a civil war would be
like. He never knew, because Augusta, where he

198 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

lived, was never invaded by the ^N'ortliern Army. Gen-
eral Sherman passed it by. Once it was said that he
would come, and the doors of the red brick house were
kept locked all day and the lamp in the hall remained
lighted all night.

In the abstract war was something useless, terrible,
to the future War-President, as a child. Principles be-
hind war were the important things to Woodrow Wilson,
who, when he was Governor of I^ew Jersey, at the out-
set of his career, said in an address :

^When I was a very young child, when I could
hardly read, there fell into my hands a book, which
perhaps few of the youngest members of the Senate
have had occasion to see, that was entitled ^The Life of
Washington,' by Weems. I recall having thought even
then, child as I was, that something doubtless more
than common must have been possessed by that cause
for which our fathers fought.''

As a boy he was imaginative. Once he invented a
character for himself, which for days and months he
secretly lived. He ^^made believe" that he was an
Admiral in the ^avy, and he wrote long reports to an
imaginary !Navy Department. That was when he was
almost fifteen years old, and he signed these reports
"Admiral Wilson." One of them described how he
led a successful expedition in the Southern Pacific ocean
against a nest of pirates. He "made believe" that
the Government had been terrorized by the seizure of
the vessels at sea. "Admiral Wilson" was ordered to
investigate, and he told in the reports how he finally
trailed them in the vicinity of an uncharted island,

WOODROW WILSON 199

captured the pirate fleet, and after some mention of
his heroic leadership, reported their total destruction.
He had learned about ships and navigation from books
he had been reading. During the greater part of sev-
eral months "Tommy" lived in his waking hours in
the character he had himself invented.

When he was seventeen, he went to Davidson College
in JSTorth Carolina. It was a college with strong Pres-
byterian tendencies. The living quarters were primi-
tive in the extreme. The boys cleaned their own rooms,
filled their oil lamps (there were no electric lights
then), chopped their own fire-wood and carried it to
their rooms. He developed the habit of taking long
walks alone in the country at this time, though he was
popular with his college mates and would talk eagerly
on any subject.

His nickname at the college was "Monsieur Mouton.'^
It was fastened on him because he was asked by a
teacher in class, "What is calves' meat when served on
the table ?" and he answered hastily, "Mutton."

He was taken ill in college and had to return home.
He spent the following year at home tutoring in Greek
and kindred studies in preparation for entering Prince-
ton. It had been the favorite university for the South^
but the Civil War had made it impossible for the usual
number of Southern boys to go there on account of the
expense. There were only twenty other Southern stu-
dents when Woodrow Wilson entered Princeton when
he was nineteen. But he brought no war-sentiment
with him, as so many yoimg men from the South did.
He had no sectional feeling that he ever expressed.

200 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

The day lie arrived, he declared himself in an argu-
ment on the campus, — a Democrat.

He was a very positive type of a young man with
the manners and. speech of a gentleman. He was
thoughtful and used good English, so that he soon
had a reputation in the college for being well read and
of sound judgment. He had suddenly grown up
to be a young man of prominence on the campus. He
had come to Princeton to find out what career he should
choose, and he found it on the shelves of the Chan-
cellor Green Library, in a bound volume of the Geyitle-
7nans Magazine, the famous literary publication issued
in London and originally started by Dr. Samuel John-
son. These magazines contained the parliamentary re-
ports of debates and in the department of "Men and
Manners in Parliament" Yv^oodrov/ Wilson found the in-
spiration of his life work — that of statesmanship.

In the elm groves, along the shaded streets of Prince-
ton, young Woodrow Wilson would saunter, his mind
full of what he had read in the Gentleman s Magazine.
To him in these days, John Bright, Disraeli, Gladstone,
great leaders in the National affairs of Great Britain,
were giants, — just as Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Or-
lando, and he himself were giants of statesmanship to
the young men of Princeton many years later. I^oth-
ing could have influenced the career of a young man so
much as those clever articles he read about the English
Parliament.

He wasted no time or thought at Princeton upon any
studies but those about government, the history of gov-
ernment, the theory of it, and the lives of great politi-

WOODROW WILSON 201

cal leaders. He wrote a great deal to improve his style,
learned short-hand, and joined the debating societies
where he could practice extemporaneous speaking. He
joined the ^'Whig Society" and became one of its lead-
ing speakers. He realized that elocution was impor-
tant, and he would go out into the woods and declaim to
himself. On his vacation he spent a great deal of
time in his father's church, reading aloud to himself
and making speeches to the empty pews. In fact, he
organized a debating society called the Liberal Debat-
ing Club, which was conducted on the rules of the Brit-
ish Parliament. The wi-iters who inspired him in his
study of speaking and statemanship were Chatham,
Burke, Brougham. Burke was his mainstay. He did
not neglect college sports either, for in '78-'79 he was
president of the Athletic Committee, the coach of foot-
ball, and was a member of the Baseball Association.

In his Senior year he wrote his first serious article,
which was accepted by one of the best magazines. It
was called '^Cabinet Government in the United States"
and was signed Thomas W. Wilson. He was then
twenty-two years old.

He went from Princeton to the law department of the
University of Virginia. In the quiet and pleasant
surroundings of Charlottesville he did a great deal of
writing, besides studying law. His article on John
Bright attracted such attention that he made a speech
which drew the largest crowd from outside which the
university had ever known. He matriculated in law,
and when he was twenty-six, he opened a law ofiice in
Atlanta. He paid much more attention, however, to

202 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

writing than he did to the small practice he had. He
was then writing a book, "Congressional Government, a
Study in American Politics," which was published three
years later. Deciding that an unknown lawyer in At-
lanta had little chance of making a public career, he
dissolved his partnership and went to Johns Hopkins
University to spend two or three years in the study of
Political Science. An essay he wrote at the time, ^'A
Study of Adam Smith," brought the young man further
fame. It was published in a magazine, and subse-
quently grouped in a book called "An Old Master, and
Other Political Essays," by Woodrow Wilson.

After leaving Johns Hopkins University, he accepted
the position of assistant professor of history at Bryn
Mawr, a young ladies' college. After a short period as
professor at another college, he went back to Princeton
(where he was graduated), as professor of Political
Science.

When Dr. Woodrow Wilson resigned his post as the
President of Princeton, to accept the nomination of the
Democratic Party for Governor of ]^ew Jersey, he was
regarded as a victim of deluded ambition. The country
did not know that he had been training for twenty years,
for the work that was before him. He had wi'itten
among other books interpreting E'ational history and
affairs, a book on "Constitutional Government." The
intensity of his secret passion for political reform soon
made him a world-figure, for he fulfilled his pre-election
promises, an event which was without the rank and file
of political precedent. The "bosses" felt that they
could count upon him, and their misguided confidence

WOODROW WILSON 203

was rudely awakened when he kept a promise he made
to the people to act as their representative and not as
the political tool of the bosses. Shortly after he took
office as Governor of 'New Jersey, he served notice on
the Democratic bosses that they were out, ^'and they will
stay out, if I have anything to say about it," he added.
His speech of acceptance was a defiance, a declaration
of political independence. It was an echo of the genius
of leadership that had been in course of preparation in
Mr. Wilson for thirty-three years. Politics had been
his ambition. He was asked how he happened to enter
political life, when he was on the threshold of his
career.

''Why, I suppose I was bom a political animal. Al-
ways, from the first recollections of my youth, I have
aimed at political life," he said. Stored-up energy of
his ambition lifted him almost at once, in the minds
of his countrymen, to the Presidency. He took office
for his first term llarch 4th, 1913, after one of the most
triumphant and sweeping elections ever known. Pac-
tional war in the Republican Party gave him 435 elec-
toral votes to Roosevelt's 88 and Taft's 8. His plural-
ity over Roosevelt was more than 2,000,000, and nearly
3,000,000 over Taft. He restored the Democratic
Party to power from the wilderness where it had been
banished for sixteen years. He carried with him a
Democratic majority of five in the Senate and more
than two-thirds of the House.

At the outset of his- career as President of the United
States he demanded and seized political leadership,
against political precedent. The leader of the Demo-

204 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

cratic Party when Mr. Wilson was elected was Mr.
Bryan. Mr. Bryan had played the leading part in the
Baltimore Convention. He had materially aided his
nomination, if not actually nominating him. However,
Mr. Wilson differed at once in political policy with Mr.
Bryan. The difficulty of compromise between the
Democratic leader and the President cropped up in the
formation of the Cabinet. There entered into the selec-
tion of its members a powerful Wilson influence in the
personality of Colonel House, who had taken a promi-
nent though non-political part in the President's elec-
tion. Mr. House remained the most important
unofficial-official of the Democratic administration.
Instead of accepting the routine of executive govern-
ment as his predecessors had done, Mr. Wilson did not
favor ^^deserving Democrats." He chose as his advisers
leaders in thought and ideals, irrespective of political
creed. Gradually he became the only final arbiter of
ISTational problems. His power and ability imbued his
name with an authority never before known in the
White House. He mastered political traditions, and
created a progressive government which was tending
always towards more power for the people, less power
for the politician, but above all supreme power for the
President.

His first foreign problem was with Mexico, inherited
from the previous administration. In the spring of
1914 American troops captured Vera Cruz. Carranza
was recog-nized in 1915. General Pershing's punitive
expedition into Mexico took place in 1916. Two years
before, in August, 1914, the great European war began.

WOODROW WILSON 205

The President's efforts were concentrated first on
peace negotiations between the belligerents. They
failed utterly, and February 3rd, 1917, America's diplo-
matic relations with Germany were severed and we de-
clared war on April 6th, 1917. On December 4th,
1918, President Wilson, then in his second term, sailed
for Europe with the eyes of the world upon him. He
was received in England, Prance, Italy, as the savior of
the people. His fourteen points, a declaration for a
universal arrangement of world-peace, and his docu-
ment of allied agreement, the League of Nations, were
adopted in 1919. He came back for a brief visit to
America, during which he strengthened as best he could
the political battle-line, and returned to Paris.

The treaty was signed in July, 1919, and Mr .Wilson
brought the document back with him and gave it to
the Senate for ratification. In March, 1920, it was de-
feated in the Senate, chiefly due to the opposition con-
ducted by Senator Lodge. During a speaking tour in
a last strenuous effort to arouse public sentiment in the
League of Nations, Mr. Wilson broke down and has
been in ill-health ever since.

Contemporary sentiment since Mr. Wilson's retire-
ment is almost unanimous not merely in sympathy with
him, but in recognition of his genius as a great
American leader in progressive ideas of world-peace.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

(1858 - 1918)

THE IDOL OF HIS COUNTRY

Copyright, 1904, by Pach Bros., N. Y.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

,rk

THEODOEE EOOSEVELT

(1858-1918)

THE IDOL OF HIS COUNTRY

THE story of Theodore Roosevelt," said a writer
who knew him well, ^'is the story of a small
boy Y\4io read about great men and decided he
wanted to be like them/'

He not only wanted to be, but he became a great man,
because he was never afraid, never idle, never weakened
in a crisis, and w^as sure of himself to the last. Self-
confidence was born in him; he had that necessary ele-
ment of self-confidence — fighting blood.

His childhood was passed in the. house where he was
born, 28 East 20th Street, New York. He was a New
Yorker by birth, but a plainsman, a rancher, a hunter
by inclination. From the day he was born he was
physically delicate. He was a victim of asthma. His
nights were sometimes spent sitting up in a chair, be-
cause he couldn't breathe lying down. But the pain
and discomfort of this, even when he was a child,
merely strengthened his fighting spirit. This he in-
herited from a long line of ancestors, who represented
the combination of push, imagination, and energy
which is the inheritance of a hundred million Amer-
icans. The contrast of the delicate, feeble, studious
child and the heroic figure Theodore Roosevelt became

209

210 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

is the most inspiring proof of just what a boy can do
for himself if he's got the right stuff in him.

His father was a successful merchant in ]^ew York,
prosperous, well placed socially, and highly thought of
by the citizens of that city in the fifties. His home was
spacious, he was a man of independent fortune. He
was vigorous, courageous, and exceptionally gentle and
unselfish. Like his son, his friends were among all
classes.

Theodore lived a remote, dreamy sort of life as a
small boy. Animals attracted his imaginative mind
first. In the back yard of his aunt's house adjoin-
ing, there were a cow, rabbits, peacocks, cats, white
mice, and hens. These were his inspiration; the
sources of his talent for thrilling stories which he told
to his delighted sisters Carrie and Edith. Particularly
exciting was the story about the man-eating monster
he called the ^'zeal." The idea for this masterpiece of
juvenile fiction came to him as a very real experience.
Listening obediently to the minister in church, Theo-
dore heard him say, quoting from the Psalms :

"For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up."

When he was a child, his mind hungered for adven-
tures, and these he got from books and from a curiosity
about things he saw or heard. At the age of nine he
started a diary. His summers had been spent at Bar-
rington on the Hudson, where his father's summer home
was. He was presented with a Shetland pony called
General Grant. His sister always believed that the
General had been christened after the pony. He was
a strange, imaginative, creative child, for about this time

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 211

he began an exhaustive work entitled in his own hand-
writing, ^'Natural History on Insects, by Theodore
Roosevelt, Jr." In his ^^preface" he wrote in the
manuscript in his own hand, ^^All these insects are
^Native of I^orth America. Most of the insects are not
in other books. I will write about ants first." At the
close of this manuscript, written in a copy book, is a
strictly personal note to the reader from the author :

"P. S. My home is in E'orth Amer-i-ca. All these
stories are gained by observation. Age nine years.
Born 27th October."

When he was eleven years old, a tall, slim boy with
long spindle legs, he was taken to Europe with his par-
ents, and retained the attitude of any American boy
towards a decadent world. He was bored with the
sights, the art galleries, the cathedrals, the tombs, and
enjoyed only the museums, especially those of natural
science and history. This trip made no impression
on him. It did not disturb his American instinct that
insisted America was "God's own Country." The
habits he had acquired of insect study became an em-
barrassing feature to his parents, and especially to his
brother, Elliott, who was usually assigned to a room with
him in hotels. In Vienna, one day, Elliott said to his
father :

"Father, do you think it would be extravagant if I
were now and then to have a room to myself in the
hotels ?"

"Not if you wish it. But why ?" his father asked.

"Come and see our room," said Elliott.

There were bottles everywhere, small bottles with

212 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

muddy water or weeds in them. In the basin were the
entrails of small animals that Theodore had cleaned to
prepare as stuffed specimens. He was a '^grubby"
boy was Theodgre, wholly intent upon scientific re-
searches which he refused to surrender. During this
formative period, he corresponded, with some indica-
tions of a romantic tendency, with a little girl of his ac-
quaintance, a friend of his sisters — Edith Carow. In
a letter written to her from Paris he signs himself, —
^'You are my most faithful correspondent — Ever
yours — T. Roosevelt." Years later this little girl
became his second wife, his first being Alice Lee.

When he was fifteen, he made an important resolu-
tion. He decided to pursue no dreams that he could
not put into action. In his boyhood experiences he had
encountered boys who bullied him, who wanted him to
fight. Being delicate he had no strength, and only his
brother Elliott protected him. Once, however, he was
attacked by two boys and he attempted to retaliate.
The two boys, realizing that he was weak, didn't hurt
him, but just mussed him up, tossing him about gently
and easily. This attitude of compassion, of pity, made
him furious. He realized then and there that he must
make himself physically fit to meet the emergencies
of the kind of man he wanted to be. He talked it over
with his father, and was soon at work with an ex-prize
fighter learning to box.

When he was fourteen his family took him, with his
brothers and sisters, to Egypt, hoping the climate would
do him good. On this trip it looked as though Theo-
dore Roosevelt would become a professor of insects.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 213

He became a naturalist, abstracted, serious, dedicated
to science. He spent most of bis time collecting "speci-
mens." This obstinacy of character, which drove him
persistently towards a goal once he had fixed his mind
upon it, accounts for many of the daring and deter-
mined events of his life. He spent this winter in
Egypt studying field mice and especially snakes, and he
spent it that way with a single-minded devotion that
nothing could swerve. In the spring, with his mother
and the rest of the family, his father having returned
to ^ew York, he went to Carlsbad and finally joined
some cousins in Dresden. Here, at fifteen, he organ-
ized the '^Dresden Literary American Club." In a
copy book, the members once a week wrote some liter-
ary impressions Avhich were read at the end of each
week. He never forgot the charms of these months in
Dresden, spent in the house of a German family.

This slender boy, who was wearing glasses then,
dreamed deeply, but he was also keenly aware of the
fact that dreams were idle unless they could be put into
action. This conclusion was deep-rooted in him when
he was fifteen, and the will to perform the task of mak-
ing himself a man of action was developing. He made
up his mind never to be afraid.

On his return, the Roosevelt home had changed to
6 West 57th Street, and Theodore spent the winter
wrestling, boxing, building himself up. For a boy he
was amazingly w^ise in foresight ; he saw that he had to
build up his strength, if he was to amount to anything.
A\Tien he was sixteen his father bought the old rambling
house at Oyster Bay, which was called "Tranquility."

214 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTEH

Two years later, in a parade of Harvard Freshmen,
Theodore Roosevelt carried a torch in the streets of
Boston, and shonted for Hayes, the Republican candi-
date for President against Samuel Tilden. He couldn't
vote, but he could shout. The Democrats retaliated,
and one man threw up a window of a house they were
passing and yelled, '^Shut up, you blooming Fresh-
men !" The young man with the glasses shook his fist
in anger at this man, and the other boys asked who
he was, applauding his spirit.

His first reform measure was put into execution just
before he left Oyster Bay for Harvard. He put a
price on field mice which had become a nuisance. He
offered five cents apiece, twenty-five cents for a fam-
ily of them. His sister was left with the important
task of paying for this gruesome collection. His
asthma had not left him, but he stuck at his job in
college.

With his college associates he maintained a reserve.
Being a member of one of the oldest Knickerbocker
families he was entitled to membership in many of the
best societies and clubs of Harvard. He joined only
three, but they did not interest him very much. He
was a strenuous college student. He was an editor of
the Harvard Advocate, an officer in many social organi-
zations; he drove a trap, he rowed, he boxed, he
wrestled, ran races, taught Sunday School. In the
summers he hunted in Maine. He danced at all
parties, took part in college theatricals, and stirred the
whole Senior class with a sudden ambition to skip the
rope. He was graduated from Harvard when he was

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 215

twentj-two, a vigorous, active, determined youth. He
had gained much towards the goal he had set himself
when a boy, the goal of being a man.

Towards the end of his course at Harvard, he in-
formed his father that he wanted to be a professor of
^N'atural History. His father consented, provided his
son would agree to be a real scientist, not a mere dabbler
in the naturalistic study. He soon found out that the
job of a professor of Natural Science involved spending
too much time squinting through a microscope, and he
gave it up. The influence of Bill Sewall, the back-
woodsman, upon the life of Theodore Roosevelt, began
about this time. It was very great, because this big,
bearded hunter and woodsman resembled the kind of
man he had thought about in his boyhood. He typi-
fied the imaginary heroes of his childhood.

^Take good care of this young fellow," said the man
who introduced Theodore to Bill Sewall. "He's am-
bitious and he isn't very strong. He won't say when
he's tired, he won't complain, but he'll just break
down."

The first thing that Bill did for Theodore, when he
was eighteen, was to take him for a twenty-five mile
walk, "a good fair walk for any common man," said
Bill. Theodore tramped the whole distance, and Bill
concluded he was at least no weakling. This man of
the woods became Theodore's hero, and he hoped to be-
come like him, as nearly as possible, in spite of the fact
that his physician told him, after his graduation in
1880, that he had heart trouble and must choose a pro-
fession that would not demand any violent exertion.

216 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

^'Doctor, I'm going to do all the things you tell me
not to do," he said. '^If I've got to live the sort of
life you describe, I don't care how short it is."

This was said when he was twenty-two. He married
in October of that year. The following summer he
climbed mountains in Switzerland, climbing the Matter-
horn because an Englishman had boasted that he was
the only man who had climbed that big mountain. It
was after his return from his summer in Europe that
he reached a determination to go into politics. He
joined the Twenty-First District Republican Associa-
tion of ISTew York. The decision was not a patriotic
impulse of service, or an egotistical notion that the coun-
try must be saved. He joined because he wanted to
be amonff those who were doins: somethins; in the world.
He wanted to be among the ^'fighters." His friends de-
plored his decision. They told him that politics were
'%w," that it was no position for "a gentleman." He
was told that only saloon-keepers and horse-car conduc-
tors went into politics. He accepted these statements,
and said that if these were the men who conducted the
government of the United States, he wanted to look into
it.

^T want to find out if I am really too w^eak to hold
my own in a rough and tumble," he said. The supreme
ambition of his life was to be strong.

The club quarters were over a saloon, and when he
first appeared there, with his side whiskers and his air
of wealth and class, the men were wary of him. The
club boss was Jake Hess, who treated him amiably.
He looked like a ^'dude," to the members of the club.

THEODORE EOOSEVELT 217

His first fight in the club, against ^'bossism," was over
a non-partisan system of street-cleaning. They ap-
plauded his speech, but voted as Jake Hess ordered, and
Roosevelt was defeated 95 to 4. He grinned, and kept
moving. The grin with which he took his punishment
pleased the politicians, especially a red-headed, shrewd
Irishman, Joe Murray. He was a leader of a gang,
and finally got a job with Tammany Hall to bully Re-
publican voters at election. The Tammany ''Boss"
neglected to reward Murray one election, and the
Republican leaders employed him. He liked young
Roosevelt for his courage and his ideas, and the latter
liked Murray for the fundamental character of courage
and hard hitting that he displayed. He recognized the
shrewdness which Murray had, in spite of his lack of
education. On this account he felt that he could learn
something from ]\rurray. This man brought about the
nomination of Theodore Roosevelt for the Assembly.
It was a ''silk stocking" campaign. Besides Roosevelt
there was another "old Xew York" family name on
the ballot — William Waldorf Astor. Roosevelt was
elected, Astor was defeated.

During his first political taste of Albany he bit hard
into legislative corruptions, in spite of friendly advice
to avoid friction. His jaw v/as stiff and square by
this time. He was the youngest member of the Legis-
lature and the most active. He led a resolution to
impeach a Judge for using his ofiicial position to sup-
port Jay Gould and his crowd.

"We have a right to demand that our judiciary shall
be kept beyond reproach," he said.

218 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

This activity against the ^^ring" won the confidence
of the people of the State of Xew York, and he was re-
elected to the Assembly, in spite of the opposition of
financiers and a Democratic landslide. He gained the
distinction of being called the ^'cyclone member."

The following summer, 1883, it became evident that
he must do something to restore his health, so he ran
away to ranch life in the West. His adventures in the
^^Bad Lands" with Bill Sewall included hunting, Indian
raids, stampedes of cattle, bronco-busting hardships in
the saddle, fights in border towns ; all the things of the
^Svild West" were his. Early in his training as a cow-
boy he learned to meet his man with moral courage.

^Tut up or shut up !" he said, striding up to a man,
gTin in hand. "Fight now, or be friends."

''Make it friends," said the cowboy, who had probably
been testing the strength of the Easterner with glasses.
In the West he grew strong, hardy ; his body responded
to the spirit of fearlessness that was born in him.

In 1889, when he was thirty-one, he had written
many books, but he didn't expect much revenue from
them. He did not feel that he had found his career yet.
He also felt the necessity of leaving a distinguished
name for his children. He thought of going into busi-
ness. President Harrison offered him the position of
Civil Service Commissioner. He was advised not to
accept. It was thought he would be politically buried.
However, civil service reform was interesting to him,
and he accepted. Life in Washington was agreeable
to him and his family. His closest friend was Senator
Lodge, whom he had known at Harvard, although Lodge

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 219

was nine years his senior. He was a close friend of
John Hay. During the six years he occupied this posi-
tion, every autumn he took a run out West, ^%r a hack
at the bears in the Rockies."

In 1895, he became Police Commissioner of J^ew
York. His friends urged him to do this. The bril-
liant, aggressive, manly direction of the police depart-
ment gave him IvTational fame.

^'He detested cowardice, and he always stood by the
man who was doing or trying to do his job," said a
police captain of him. He would spend long nights
prowling about the city streets to see how the police
were doing their work. The people gradually realized
that the man himself was a moral force that would not
yield.

In 1897, President McKinley appointed Roosevelt
Assistant Secretary of Navy, at his own request. A
year later war was declared with Spain. When the
President called for volunteers, Roosevelt resigned his
job in Washington, and raised the famous "Rough
Riders," made up of noted cowboys from the West.
Every one, even Bill Sewall, advised him not to do
this. In San Antonio he assembled his regiment with
the help of his friend Leonard Wood, who became his
Colonel. To his sister Roosevelt sent this note in ex-
planation :

"I couldn't stay. That was the sum and substance
of it — although I realize well — what a change for the
worse it means in my after life."

Yet his gallantry and bravery in Cuba with the
Rough Riders was probably the most vital event in his

220 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

public life, for two weeks after the Rough Riders were
disbanded be was nominated for Governor of I^ew York.
He took his war veterans with him on the stump. The
election was close, and on election night he went to bed
believing himself defeated. At 2 a. m., standing in a
pair of scarlet pajamas, he received the news of his
election.

'^Is it right ?" was Roosevelt's question on all issues
of State, and if it wasn't, he vetoed or neglected the
orders of the political boss in Albany.

By this time his fame as a '^progressive" had spread.
He had achieved a I^ational reputation, that could lead
only to the top. The Vice-Presidency was urged upon
him by his party, but he repeatedly declined. He
yielded only vrhen he discovered that his name would
give strength to McKinley's second term.

Roosevelt has been aptly described as a man of des-
tiny. The startling news of McKinley's assassination
reached Roosevelt on an island in Lake Champlain.
The final news of the President's death found him
thirty-five miles away from the nearest clubhouse on
the mountain. Runners, not knowing where to find
him, went up through the mountain firing guns at
regular intervals to attract attention. He heard them,
responded with his own gun, and received the news.

That perilous ride in a buck-board on a pitch-dark
road, in the face of a driving rain, was the time when
Roosevelt faced the possibility of being President with
anxiety. He reached the railroad station at dawn,
where a special train was waiting for him, which took
him to Bufi:'alo.

THEODORE EOOSEVELT 221

The emotion of the man, tense, struggling to face the
responsibility put upon him suddenly, reached its break-
ing point when the Secretary of War told him it was
the wish of the Cabinet that he be sworn in at once.
His eyes filled with tears. Judge Hazel administered
the oath.

^'I do solemnly swear," said Roosevelt, one hand held
high, "that I will faithfully execute the office of Presi-
dent of the United States, and will, to the best of my
ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution
of the United States." Then he added, after a brief
pause, '^And thus I swear."

Then began a new era. The supervision of cor-
porations and the "square deal" for labor became the
first duty of the new President.

The supreme standards of his personal character in-
fluenced the x^ational growth in the succeeding period
of his term of office. To the end, Theodore Roosevelt
was the strong man of America, because he had willed
it in boyhood.

His son's cable reply to his brother in France, an-
nouncing his death, is the finest epic of the great man's
active life.

"The Lion is dead."

BOOKEE T. WASHINGTON

(1859-1915)

THE EDUCATIONAL LEADER OF
THE NEGRO RACE

BCMDKER T. WASHINGTON

llli rtiivV rSRK
PUBLIC LIBRARY.J'

ASTOF^, LEffOX
TIL£>EN F0UNDATI01

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

(1859-1915)

THE EDUCATIONAL LEADER OF
THE NEGEO RACE
V

"T ^-^^ ^^^'^ ^ slave on a plantation in Franklin
I County, Virginia/' wrote Booker T. Washing-
ton, the founder of the famous college for the
colored race, Tuskegee University, in Tuskegee, Ala-
bama. It was a desolate, miserable, discouraging
^'home'' in which he was born. His mother was the
plantation cook; the food was cooked on skillets and
in pots on a huge log fire. There were no windows
in the cabin, no floor but the earth, and the cabin itself
was loosely built so that the wind and rain, in stormy
weather, swept into it in cold gusts. The door hung
loosely on a piece of cord. Wretched was the beginning
of this remarkable man, who by force of his own char-
acter became a leader of his race. Tbe only garment
he wore as a child was a shirt made of flax, which was
a torture to the flesh. He slept on a dirty rag pallet
thrown in a corner of the cabin at night. From this
state of human degradation he climbed to a position
of honor and trust, a leader in the education of the
I^egro race.

The ambition of his childhood was to learn to read.
It was the hope deep-rooted in the colored race. None

225

226 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

of the slaves in slavery days could read or write. Oc-
casionally a kindly white woman would teach one of the
black boys to read a spelling book, but these incidents
were rare. The first gleam of hope came to the boy
when the slaves of the plantation were summoned to the
^^big house" on the hill. On a beautiful morning they
gathered on the lawn in front of their white masters.
The entire family, men and women, was on the porch,
face to face with these black slaves. There was a feel-
ing, underneath the excitement of the occasion, of sym-
pathy, of affection for the white masters from whom
they knew they were about to be separated. On the
porch was a strange man in uniform. He read aloud
a long document he held in his hand. It was the Eman-
cipation Act, giving freedom to the slaves. When he
had finished, the white master announced that they were
free, they could go when they liked. With mingled
feelings of fear and joy the colored people went back
to their wretched quarters, puzzled, frightened, wonder-
ing what they would do out in the world in competition
for a livelihood with their former masters. The first
impulse of this new freedom was to make a holiday
of it, to go away somewhere and think the whole situa-
tion over. It was a great responsibility, being free.
How could they be able to take charge of themselves,
and their children? The problems, which the white
people had solved, confronted these people and became
an oppressive burden. There were the great questions
of a home, a living, education for the children, citizen-
ship, and the support of themselves.

The first great question was to find names for them-

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 227

selves. In slavery they had been just "John" or
"Susan" belonging to some one. Usually they were
known by the name of their master, such as "Smith's
John," or "Jones's Susan." The appalling ignorance
of this vast horde of freed slaves at the time of their
emancipation made them choose names indiscrimi-
nately. Most of them preferred high-sounding names,
usually three of them. The middle name rarely went
further than an initial, which they described as their
"entitles." The way Booker T. Washington christened
himself is typical.

"" At the roll-call of the children for the first school
class, this colored boy fell into line. He heard those
ahead of him giving themselves names. He himself
hadn't thought of any. His mother, for some unknown
reasons, had tried to attach the name of "Taliafero" to
him, but without success. In the wretched log-cabin
on the plantation he had been called "Booker." But
this was not enough for the dig-nity of his new rights in
freedom. The half-scared, totally ignorant little
colored boy thought quickly. As his time came to an-
swer the roll-call he told the teacher his name was
Booker T. Washington, and so unconsciously he en-
rolled himself among the famous.

His home life had been totally without any compre-
hension of the word "home." He never knew, who his
father was, but stated his impression, in after years, that
he was a white man. His mother, however, claimed a
husband who had been a slave on some other plantation.
He had run away and, doing odd chores for the Federal
soldiers, managed to settle in West Virginia, the new ,/

228 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

State; so slie joined him with her family, making the
trip of five hundred miles pushing her belongings in a
cart. Their parting with their former owners was a
sad occasion. For years afterwards they kept up a
correspondence with members of the family. The pro-
vision which their step-father had made for them in
West Virginia was worse than the cabin they had occu-
pied on the plantation. He was employed in a salt-
mine near Molden, West Virginia. The cabin they
lived in was smaller, dirtier, a mere hutch in a cluster
of similar cabins surrounded by filthy and unsanitary
conditions. In this miserable degradation where the
neighbors indulged in drinking, gambling, and quarrel-
ing, the boyhood of Booker was passed. He was soon
put to work in the salt-mines to earn money for this
hideous ^^home.'^ It was in the salt-mine that the boy
learned to make his first mark. The barrels in which
the salt was packed were numbered. The number
allotted to his section was eighteen. Gradually he
associated this sign with his work, and finally man-
aged to write the number himself, not knowing what it
meant.

He had secretly vov»^ed that if he did nothing else,
in his life, he would learn, somehow, how to read.
This was his absorbing ambition. He kept begging his
mother to get him a book with printed words in it.
Finally she managed to get hold of a primer for him, an
old copy of Webster's ^'blue-back'' spelling book. This
was the first book he ever had, and he devoured it,
struggling to understand the letters. Some one told him
that he must first learn the alphabet, a difficult thing to

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 229

do without a teacher. It was in these dark hours of
his ambition that he endured the tragic experiences of
his race, that he discovered the horror of ignorance,
from which sprang the whole course of his future life
to educate them. There was no one in the neighbor-
hood among the colored people who could read. In a
few weeks, during which his mother helped him with
her sympathy and what assistance she could give, he
mastered the alphabet. In her was an ambition to
educate her children, that encouraged him, also. One
day a colored boy who had been taught to read in
slavery came to Molden, and at the close of his day's
work he vv'ould read the newspaper aloud to groups of
colored people. This w^as an additional spur to the
boy's ambition, arousing envy and admiration for this
young man of his ov;n race, who could accomplish this
wonderful art of reading. The influence of this young
man's '^education" upon the rest bore fruit. The first
school for Negro children was acquired, the first at
least in that part of Virginia. To find a teacher was
the problem. The young man who could read aloud was
considered, but he was too young. No free schools for
colored children had been started in Virginia up to that
time, so the older people agreed to contribute enough
money to engage a colored teacher with the understand-
ing that the teacher was to "board aroun'." The vvdiole
race was compelled to go to school, few were too young
or too old. But during his boyhood he often found that
the colored teacher knew little more than he did him-
self.

The ambition of the older colored people was to learn

230 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

to read the Bible. Night schools for the gray-headed
men started for this purpose. The mania for ^^going to
school" spread, till there were day schools, night schools,
Sunday schools of all sorts. Young Booker Washing-
ton was compelled to attend the night school because
his step-father insisted that he keep at work in the salt-
factory. Out of this experience came his realization
in later years that night schools were necessary at the
Hampton Institute and at Tuskegee.
' When, after much wrangling and waiting, Booker
was permitted to attend the day school, he was con-
fronted with a problem that was hard to overcome. He
saw that the other boys all wore hats. He had never
owned one in his life. He complained to his mother.
She told him that she couldn't afford to buy him a
^^store hat,'' but she made one by cutting two pieces of
homespun cloth and sewing them together. This was
his first cap.

Most of his boyhood was spent in hard labor, partly
in a coal mine, and he admitted in later years that he
envied the white boys who had no obstacles to their
chances of going to Congress, of becoming bishops or
professors. The impulse of his whole life was an in-
ordinate ambition for equal opportunity for the race.

It was by accident that he heard of the Hampton
Institute, the famous colored university of Virginia.
This fired his imagination, and seeing no future in the
coal mine, he secured a position as a servant in the
home of a Mrs. Ruffur. From there he set out for the
Hampton Institute, knowing scarcely in what direction
he should travel, and with no idea of what it would

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 231

cost him. Except for the overwhelming ambition for
education, he could never have overcome the obstacles
that confronted him. No one encouraged him in his
plans. Even his mother, his only friend, insisted that
his ambition was "a wild-goose chase." The older
Negroes saw something of the spirit of the boy, how-
ever, for they took up a collection in dimes and nickels
to help him take the first step in his trip to the
university. The distance was many hundreds of miles.
He w^as ^refused shelter at all hotels, spenr^mahy nights
in the open, and finally reached Richmond, Va., penni-
less, weary, and starved. This was eighty-two miles
from Hampton. In Richmond, where years afterwards
he was the guest of a complimentary mass meeting of
over two thousand people, he slept under a board walk.
The next morning he got employment unloading a ship,
and so secured a few dollars with which to continue his
trip to Hampton, undaunted.

When he presented himself at Hampton Institute,
ragged, dirty, and hungry, he made a very poor impres-
sion on Miss Mary FT MacKie, the head teacher. She
kept him in suspense for some time, and finally told
him to sweep and dust the recitation room. He was
so anxious to be enrolled that he sw^ept the big room
twice, dusted it four times, and waited anxiously for the
verdict of this test of thoroughness in character to
which he had been put. Her decision was in his favor.
^T guess you will do to enter the Institution," she said.
Hundreds of other colored youths went through the
same terrible experience in their eagerness to secure
an education. Booker was offered the position of jan-

232 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

itor in return for his schooling, which enabled him to
v/ork out his board.

•^- He was the youngest student at Hampton at the
time ; most of them were grown men and women, some
over forty years of age. They were tremendously in
earnest, but many of them were too old to master the
textbooks. It was a struggle not only against intel-
lectual deficiencies but against intense poverty.

In all these years of difiiculty and trouble Booker
T. Washington sensed the need of education for the
J^egro, saw the hopelessness of his chances in the world
without it. 'No discouragement stopped him, no work
was too arduous to accomplish the ideal of his character.
The education which he received from the textbooks
was a small part of the experience. He acknowledged,
years afterwards, that it was the patience, sympathy,
and example shown him by the unselfish white teachers
who devoted their lives to the spiritual improvement of
the Negro that inspired him to fight on. At heart
an idealist, his one aim was to do something to make
the world better, and to interpret the [N'egro character
in telling about the handicaps of his race.

During the reconstruction period he saw what he
considered the unjust exploitation of the l^egro in po-
litical life. He saw colored men in the Legislature and
in county ofiices who couldn't read or write. A few of
them were worthy, but many were not. From Hamp-
ton Institute he returned to Molden where he conducted
a colored school for ten years, then he went to Wash-
ington, D. C, to investigate the educational system of
the ^N'egroes there. He found a false standard of ideas.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 233

At Hampton the student was taught to be self support-
ing, not above any sort of work. In Washington he
found many Negroes who were above work, whose tui-
tion and board were paid by some philanthropic person.
The effect of this was to place the Negro in a false re-
lation to education, to make him lazy, extravagant,
irresponsible. Book education alone, lie found, only
^^eaheJthem away f rom tlie economic necessities of life.

He had made so good an impression at Hampton that
he was engaged as a teacher, and was put in charge of
a new department, the education of the Indian. He
expected to find the Indian rebellious, because Indians
had owneij slaves before the Emancipation Act. He
found, however, that consideration on both sides led
to harmony, and he conducted classes for over a hun-
dred Indians at Hampton.

In May, 1881, a letter was received at Hampton In-
stitute from some gentleman in Alabama, asking them
to recommend some one to take charge of a normal
school for colored people at Tuskegee. The letter re-
quested a white man for the job. Booker Washington
was recommended, and engaged. Tuskegee was in the
"Black Belt,'' and when the founder of the Tuskegee
Institute arrived there, he found only a lot of Negroes,
eager to go to school. There was no building, no organ-
ization to take care of them. Two thousand dollars had
been appropriated by the Legislature to pay teachers'
salaries, and that was all. He began the great work of
his life in a tumble-down shanty adjoining the colored
Methodist Church. Whenever it rained, one of the
older students had to hold an umbrella over the teacher's

234 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

head during class. More than once his landlady held
an umbrella over him while he was eating his break-
fast. He went at the organization of his institution
thoroughly, as he had done everything else. He made
a trip through the State to examine the character of
the IN'egroes in their cabins. He found the same ig-
norance, dirt, degradation of cabin life that he himself
was born in. The mental attitude of his race was still
under the shadow of slavery. He asked an old ^egro
of sixty to tell him something of his history. He was
born in Virginia but had been sold into Alabama.

^'There were five of us sold," he told the teacher,
'^myself and brother and three mules."

One of his difficulties was to overcome the white
man's fear of an educated ISTegro, the expectation that
the result would be a Xegro in a high hat, imitation
gold eye-glasses, a walking stick, kid gloves, and fancy
boots. His first class was made up of thirty ISTegroes
over forty years of age, and most of them wanted edu-
cation because they hoped it would enable them to get
work as teachers. They had a longing to read big
books with big words.

^'While they could locate the Desert of Sahara or
the capital of China on an artificial globe, I found that
the girls could not locate the proper places for the knives
and forks on an actual dinner table — or the plates on
which the bread and meat should be placed," writes
Booker Washington, showing that his purpose in edu-
cation was not merely book-learning, but manners and
deportment.

During the nineteen years that he spent in the

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 235

foundation of the famous Tuskegee College he worked
for an awakening of the moral forces in the Negro, and
accomplished for them the respect of the South and the
North. By constant public speaking and personal ap-
peal he secured contributions for the buildings, land,
and farms that the institution now owns. His first
application to Collis P. Huntington, the railroad mag-
nate, netted two dollars. Later Mr. Huntington con-
tributed $50,000 to the cause. Andrew Carnegie do-
nated $20,000 for the college librar>\ The Alabama
Legislature increased its appropriation to six thou-
sand dollars. Persisting, he raised a huge total for this
now famous Institute.

Booker Taliafero Washington, born a slave, in total
ignorance, brought up in filth and misery indescribably
shameful, became a world-wide figure of supreme im-
portance and dignity, because he was a humanitarian,
a man who knew education was not only in books, but
in moral cleanliness, honesty, and sincerity of character.

WILLIAM JENNINGS BETAN
(I860 )

A CRUSADER OF ADVANCED IDEALS

From Portrait bv

Irving R. Wi
WILLIAM

JENNINGS BRYAN

THS Nj./!^ riHK
PUBLIC LIBRARY,

'tn^DEN FOUNDATIC

.WILLIAM JENNINGS BEYAN

(I860 )

A CRUSADER OF ADVANCED IDEALS

JUDGE BRYAN'S farm, about a mile outside of
Salem, Illinois, was the show-farm of that section
in 1866. It entended for- five hundred acres, and
included a garden and a private park where fine deer
were kept. In this spacious environment William
Jennings Bryan, born in Salem, started his career at
the age of six. This disposes of some fiction about
his being the son of a poor farmer. His father was,
on the contrary, a cultivated man of local importance
in Illinois. He was a Circuit Judge, had served in the
State Senate, was a man above the average in his com-
munity. He wanted his son to have a classical edu-
cation; his wife favored the career of a lawyer, for
him; young Bryan himself, at this time, wanted to be
a minister. This selection was chiefly because of the
religious influence his father exerted over the house-
hold. Judge Bryan was a very religious man. He
made religious devotion a strict part of his daily life.
He prayed three times a day, morning, noon, and night.
Often when holding court, he would look at his watch,

and at noon he would suspend proceedings and kneel

23»

240 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

for a few minutes in silent prayer in the courtroom.
No matter where he was when noontime came, he
stopped whatever he was doing for the mid-day prayer.
Once he was about to mount his horse when, looking
at his watch, he saw it was twelve o'clock, and he knelt
beside the horse, said his silent prayer, mounted, and
went on. This impressive habit influenced his son, and
made him study his Bible, so that it was the model
of his thoughts, his language, his reasoning. From
this source can be traced that distinctive fashion of all
his speeches, the form and fire of his oratory that has
moved the ISTation more than once. It is the form and
style of Biblical literature. All his life he has been a
leader — in religious movements, conducting a Sunday
School, advocating prohibition, urging a cessation of
war, opposing private capital in favor of Government
ownership whenever expedient, pressing for direct pri-
maries in Senatorial elections. His purpose has been
that of a reformer, and most of his reforms, though
scoffed at when first proposed, have become statutory
laws or N^ational policies since.

The Middle West, when Bryan grew up in it, was a
section where people lived plainly, talked frankly, and
hated class distinctions. All the influences of his first
years of life were democratic. He didn't go to school
till he was ten years old, but learned all that he knew
up to that time from his father and mother. His sur-
roundings were the quiet farmhouse, his hours were
the sunrise and sunset hours of the farm, and his daily
jobs were those of a boy on a farm, who attends to
the chores. He could take care of the animals

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 241

in the barn, plow, mow grass, pitch hay, hoe potatoes,
plant a garden, or scrub the floors with the skill of many
other boys of his age. After five years of the village
school, he went to a preparatory school for the Illinois
College, from which he was graduated when he was
twenty-one. Then he went through the Union Law
School in Chicago, and got his first job in a lawyer's
office in that city.

During those eight years he developed normally, si-
lently, without any outward indication of special tal-
ents for the law. But he had sho^vn marked ability as
a public speaker. He demonstrated this when he de-
livered the valedictory address at his graduation from
the college, where he took the second prize for oratory
in the intercollegiate contest, with a declamation of an
original oration called "Justice."

The real start of his career occurred when he went to
work in the law office of ex-Senator Lyman Trumbull,
whose influence and guidance developed the latent
talents that were in him. This fortunate opportunity
he has always regarded as the explanation of his suc-
cess as an orator. He always acknowledged his grati-
tude to the valuable influence of his first employer.
Long years afterwards, immediately after his nomi-
nation by the Democratic Convention for President in
1896, he went from the convention hall to the grave of
Senator Trumbull in Oakland Cemetery, and stood
bare-headed in grateful memory of his teachings.

His first platform, however, was the kitchen table
at home on which he would stand and repeat his lessons
to his mother, and this habit of declamation, of "speak-

242 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

ing a pipce/" was his own idea. He always felt that he
could answer questions much better if he stood on the
table than if he stood on the floor.

His ambition for public life started when he was
twelve years old, in 1872, when his father was go-
ing through a political campaign for Congress. He
watched, and listened, and saw the methods that were
employed in his father's campaign, and arrived at
certain fixed ideas as to how one could reach a place
in public life. He planned first, when he grew up,
to win a reputation and a moderate fortune in some
profession, preferably the law. Then he could think
of public life. But he actually reached his ambition,
in later years, by seizing an unexpected opportunity.

The religious side of his life took positive form when
he was only fourteen. Instead of joining the Baptist
Church to which his parents belonged, he entered the
First Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, 111., and has
been a member of that church ever since.

The strict temperance in all things, which has con-
sistently controlled the personal views of William Jen-
nings Bryan, was based on a deeply religious sense
of duty to the laws of the Church. In addition to this,
during the years he spent at the preparatory school for
college, from the age of fifteen to seventeen, he lived
with a distant relative. Dr. Hiram K. Jones. The
doctor was a scholarly sort of man with strict views
of a temperate life, which he had taught at the Con-
cord school, where he was a lecturer on Platonic Phi-
losophy. In his home, Dr. Jones and his wife, who had
no children themselves, gave young Bryan the care as

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 243

of a son. He grew up in an atmosphere of intense and
rigid self-discipline.

In tracing the early influences of his life, besides the
religious temperament of his father, the healthy and
scholarly guidance of his two mentors in Chicago,
Dr. Jones and Senator Trumbull, must be added
the inspiration and devotion of the girl he met at
the Illinois College, and whom he subsequently mar-
ried.

She was Miss Mary E. Baird of Perry, Illinois, who
was also a student in the Annex, the department for
girls. She, too, had earned distinction for her oratory
in the college, and delivered the valedictory address at
her graduation.

As a young man, William Jennings Bryan was con-
sidered one of the handsomest students in the college:
tall, with black hair, a white skin, expressive eyes, and
a smile that was winning, radiant, an embodiment of
the equable, amiable, kindly temperament he has al-
ways had. Their romance, which began on the college
campus, was founded on mutual intellectual interests,
an ideal approach to a permanent happiness. They
were engaged at the end of their college life, which
they had shared in study. He decided to be a lawyer.
They viewed their romance with practical vision, for
his fiancee decided that she too would study law, so
as to be able to help him when they were married. She
studied law, but never practiced.

Mrs. Bryan has described vividly her first meeting
with the orator:

^^My personal knowledge of Mr. Bryan dates from

244 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

September, 1879," she writes. "He was then entering
his Junior year. I saw him first in the parlors of the
young ladies' school which I attended in Jacksonville,
111. He entered the room with several other students,
was taller than the rest, and attracted my attention at
once. His face was pale and thin ; a pair of keen, dark
eyes looked out from beneath heavy eyebrows ; his nose
was prominent — too large to look well, I thought ; a
broad, thin-lipped mouth and a square chin completed
the contour of his face. He was neat though not fas-
tidious in dress, and stood firmly with dignity. I noted
particularly his hair and smile — the fonner, black in
color, fine in quality, and parted distressingly straight ;
the latter, expansive, expressive."

Mr. Brj^an's smile, when he was a young man,
was in fact so wide that an onlooker seeing him for
the first time at a public meeting said, "That man can
whisper in his own ear."

The trend of Mr. Bryan's thought in any crisis usu-
ally led to a refuge of some sort in the Scriptures.
This was because he had been influenced as a boy to seek
consolation and advice in the Bible, or in prayer. His
religious instincts have always prevailed, they have col-
ored all his famous speeches and lectures. He always
quotes the Scriptures in them. Mrs. Bryan empha-
sizes this tendency in an anecdote she recounts of her
husband's interview with her father on the subject of
their marriage :

"The time came when it seemed proper to have a little
conversation with my father," she writes, "and this
was something of an ordeal, as father is a reserved

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 245

man. In his dilemma, William sought refuge in the
Scriptures and began :

" 'Mr. Baird, I have been reading Proverbs a good
deal lately, and find that Solomon says : "Whoso findeth
a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favor of the
Lord.'' Tather, being something of a Bible scholar
himself, replied: 'Yes, Solomon did say that; but
Paul suggests that, ^yhile he that marrieth doth well,
he that marrieth not, doth better.'

''This was distressing, but William saw his way
through, for he said, 'Solomon would be the best au-
thority on this point, because Paul never married, while
Solomon had many wives.' "

The matter was then satisfactorily arranged, and they
were married in October of 1884, when Mr. Bryan was
twenty-four. During the summer of that year a small
home was built, into which they moved as soon as they
were married. This incident like many others in Mr.
Bryan's life demonstrates the practical side of his
character, which has been no small part of his success.

"During the next three years," writes Mrs. Bryan,
"we lived comfortably, though economically, and laid
by a small amount."

During this time the young "Emancipator of the
West," as he was called later, was the collection clerk
for Brown and Korby, a small firm of country law-
yers in Jacksonville. Occasionally he delivered polit-
ical speeches in the local county elections.

Mr. Bryan's choice of Lincoln, Nebraska, for a per-
manent home came three years after he was married.
There were no political reasons for the change, for the

246 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

city, county, and State were almost solidly Republican,
whereas Mr. Bryan is a Democrat. He returned home,
from a business trip to Lincoln, J^ebraska, full of en-
thusiasm for the West. He had met an old school-
mate, A. R.. Talbot, who had a law office of his own in
Lincoln, and Mr. Bryan, being offered a partnership
with him, accepted. This was not an improvement in
a business way, because the new partner was still a
young man of stiff ideals. Mr. Talbot's business as a
lawyer was largely with the railroads. Mr. Bryan,
on principle as a disciple of anti-trust legislation, de-
clined to do anything for any railroad, so he did not
share in the profits of Talbot's business, and practically
had to begin at the bottom of the ladder again. This
was never any problem to Mr. Br)'an. He has begun
over and over again in so many vital National issues
in which he has been opposed, that it is one of his chief
characteristics to pursue his ideal at whatever per-
sonal cost it involves. His is the temperament of true
reform.

Mr. Bryan's refusal as a lawyer to accept a fee of
$10,000 to defend a railroad, because he could not sur-
render his anti-trust views, indicates that he was not
destined to become a successful lawyer. His opponents
have claimed that he was not, but Mrs. Bryan writes,
in his defense, "Consider that he entered the law
at twenty-three and left it at thirty, and during that
period began twice, and twice became more than self-
supporting."

His practice in Lincoln, ^N'ebraska, was small, but he
was immediately recognized by the Democrats, who

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 247

were the minority party. His talents as a public
speaker found ample scope at banquets, meetings, and
clubs. He was soon chosen as delegate to the State
Democratic Convention and there met all the leading
Democrats of Nebraska, which led to a series of speeches
on political interests.

In 1890, when he was just thirty, he was nominated
for Congress from his district on the Democratic ticket.
Mr. Bryan's great gifts as an orator elected him in this
campaign with a majority unheard of for Democrats
in Nebraska. He had achieved the recognition, that
has been widely acknowledged since, of his intense sin-
cerity of character and his simplicity of manner and
feeling towards all people. His voice was soothing to
hear, his presence was digTiified without coldness; his
power of launching a picturesque phrase, of shy humor
and terrific earnestness, was admitted after the chief
address of his campaign.

In Congress, he was favored by an appointment on
the Committee of Ways and Means, an honor rarely
conferred on a young member. During the next three
years he studied the National issues of his time deeply.
Anxious to justify his selection on an important Com-
mittee, he prepared himself for the address on the tariff
in 1893, which launched him into National prominence.
He has always had a large following ever since he
sprang into the limelight twenty-eight years ago.

In a brief analysis of Mr. Bryan's phenomenal ac-
tivity in politics, in religion, in the social and diplomatic
affairs of the Nation, the inevitable conclusion that he
is a constructive thinker of tireless energy is brought

248 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

home to us. His intellectual grasp of big issues and his
fertility of expression have swung many National re-
forms. 'Nor has he ever retreated from his ideals in
the face of bitter opposition, though it has brought the
ridicule of cartoons and press upon him.

His defeat in his next campaign for Congress, how-
ever, left him secretly shorn of ambition. He was a
poor man, he had a family to support, and at this
crisis he thought seriously of taking up the practice
of law again. The sudden activity of the Demo
cratic Party in a great drive for National power
diverted him from this course. He had shown
himself to be a student and an original force
in democratic gospel, and more than this, in popu-
lar interpretation of issues for the people. An offer
was made him on the staff of the Omaha World-
Herald, which he accepted, at a salary of $1800. In
addition to this he was in demand as a lecturer. His
place in the political fortunes of the Democratic Party
became unassailable and his speeches, made all over the
country, were ammunition that scattered his opponents.
Finally, at the Democratic Convention, he rose to the
great opportunity of his career and captured the nomi-
nation with the famous "cross of gold'^ speech, which
urged the increased coinage of silver on a basis of 16-1
with gold.

He received an ovation, the delegates carrying him on
their shoulders round the Convention Hall, and he was
ever after a force in National life. Because of his re-
former's temperament he has been opposed ; and yet, be-
cause of his temperament also, he has made a perma-

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 2i9

nent, deep mark upon the history of the Nation. Many
of the policies he had advocated have been adopted by
other political parties, who have found them expedient.

He advocated Government ownership of railroads,
municipal ownership of utilties, regulation of corpora-
tions, tariff reforms, the Federal income tax. State
Eights, publicity of campaigTi contributions, opposi-
tion to imperialism, restriction of immigration, Federal
guarantee of deposits in National banks, self-govern-
ment for the Philippines, free Cuba, pure food laws,
employers' liability act, one term only for President,
irrigation, election of United States Senators by direct
vote, opposition to militarism, opposition to child labor,
Christian missions in foreign lands, semi-socialism.
Prohibition has been his life's work, and at the age of
sixty-one he conducts vast Sunday School meetings.

He was the first American to do something for the
abolition of war. As far back as 1905 he made a public
declaration against war that attracted wide-spread at-
tention. It was received with sneers and scoffing. At
that time war was a dead issue for America. In that
year the Congress of the Interparliamentary Union for
the Promotion of International Arbitration, adopted
an amendment written by Mr. Bryan, favoring recourse
to an International Arbitration Committee. This was
the fundamental treaty idea. With the fire of his
oratory, he attracted the attention of cynical diplomats.
Pointing at the picture of Admiral Nelson's death he
declared :

"There is as much inspiration in a noble life as in
a heroic death."

250 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

The keynote of this statement was what has now been
accepted, a realization that permanent peace depends
upon arbitration. From that time, Mr. Bryan fought
continuously to annihilate war. This became para-
mount in his service to the country as Secretary of
State. Whenever he could, he removed international
complications that might lead to war. His innumer-
able peace treaties have become prophetic instances of
his foresight in international affairs. His purpose was,
he said, "to provide a time for passion to subside."
Between 1913 and 1914 he signed twenty-six treaties of
peace with foreign nations.

Mr. Bryan has shown himself in many instances to
be a man in advance of his time.

major-ge:^eral Leonard

WOOD

(I860 )

APOSTLE OF PEACE AND
PEEPAREDNESS

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

MAJOR GENERAL LEONARD WOOD

I'ii* iNcyV r^KK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LBNOX
TII.de N FOUNDATIOMS

MAJOE-GENERAL LEONAED
WOOD

(I860 )

APOSTLE OF PEACE AND
PREPAREDNESS

THE lives of Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard
Wood are intertwined. In the days of onr war
with Spain and afterwards, when Theodore
Roosevelt was in the White House and Leonard Wood
in the saddle, it was always ''T. R.'' and ''L. W." in
their close friendship, — a friendship based upon mu-
tual admiration and personal congeniality.

It was a comradeship that was mutually stimulating,
a comradeship that helped them both to success and
honor.

They met when William McKinley was President
of the United States and Leonard Wood was physician
to the President. Theodore Roosevelt was the Assist-
ant Secretary of the Navy. Their meeting at a White
House reception was the beginning of a friendship that
remained uninterrupted during Roosevelt's life.

But long before Leonard Wood was assigned to take

care of the health of Presidents, he had won his spurs

in war.

Born in New Hampshire October 9th, 1860, Leonard
253

254 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

Wood was the son of a physician. He inherited from
his Mayflower Pilgrim forefathers the sturdy character
and sound principles that have been his guiding beacons
through life. From his great-grandfather, who led a
regiment in the Revolutionary Army at Bunker Hill,
and his father, who served as a doctor in the Civil War,
Leonard Wood came naturally by his military instincts.

As a boy, the spirit of adventure early possessed him.
He announced to his father that he intended to go to
sea — lured perhaps by the breaking waves of the ocean
on the shore of Cape Cod, where his parents then lived.
Receiving, however, no encouragement in that desire, he
decided to join an Arctic Expedition. Parental ad-
vice prevailed, for early in life Leonard Wood learned
to obey orders, a characteristic that has made him a
great soldier.

He went to Harvard Medical School and was gradu-
ated in 1884. The life of a physician in a small orbit
did not satisfy his restless mind, and he applied to the
army as a surgeon.

The army in the '80s was a quiet berth for an adven-
turesome spirit, and Leonard Wood wanted action.
!N'ot every young doctor was ambitious to go to the
"front," so Surgeon Wood's application for action re-
ceived prompt response, and he was forthwith dis-
patched to Arizona to join General Crook, in his cam-
paign against the Apaches along the Mexican border.

There he found what he dreamed of and aspired to.
With that intrepid and gallant soldier, Lawton, he took
to the saddle, and revealed qualities that through his
career of remarkable events began to inspire recogni-

MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 255

tion. Captain Lawton in reporting to the great Indian
fighter, Gen. Nelson A. Miles, in command of our troops
along the Mexican border, said, ''I can only repeat what
I have reported officially, and what I have said to you,
that his (Wood's) services during this trying (Ger-
onimo) campaigTi were of the highest order. I speak
particularly of services other than those devolving upon
him as a medical officer; services as a combatant or
line officer voluntarily performed. He sought the most
difficult work, and by his determination and courage
rendered a successful issue of the campaign possible."

Wood's character was beginning to tell. The fierce
Apaches, "tigers of the human race," were quelled and
Geronimo, their leader, captured. For months, with
his little command, he had followed them over the great
ranges, through deep ravines, and across cactus-covered
deserts.

From the quiet pursuit of the medical profession
Leonard Wood had emerged a leader of men and a
soldier, whose Indian campaigns won him the Congres-
sional Medal of Honor, the prize for personal bravery,
and the Nation's gratitude.

More Indian fighting followed, service at Western
forts as staff surgeon — and then to Washington as
President McKinley's doctor. Leonard Wood wanted
action, but for a time fate and his exceptional ability as
a medical man intervened. It was his friend Theodore
Roosevelt who opened the door again to action.

The Spanish- American War was in its earliest stages.
Secretary of War Alger offered Roosevelt a Colonelcy.
Mr. Roosevelt has sometimes been called an egotist.

256 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

Certainly his reply to the War Secretary exhibited no
vanity.

"I will accept a position of Lieutenant-Colonel of a
regiment, if my friend Leonard Wood will accept the
Colonelcy," said Roosevelt.

Thus the ^'Rough Riders" were born — the 1st
Volunteer Cavalry, which won its reputation at Las
Guasimas, Cuba, just about one month after its forma-
tion.

In the Cuban campaign, Colonel Wood displayed his
marked ability for organization and as an executive —
a genius that was recognized at Washington. Plis
soldierly qualities in the Cuban campaign won him a
Brigadier-Generalship, and his ability as an organizer
and an executive made him a logical selection as Gover-
nor-General of Cuba during the reconstruction days.
He found an island impoverished, crushed, and sick
with war and yellow-fever. He reorganized its admin-
istration, put it on a basis of self-government, and
blasted out the curse of centuries, its fever-laden breed-
ing places, conquering the dread peril of the tropics
themselves. Arising above the qualities of a surgeon,
he developed the ability of an administrator — a states-
man.

It was President McKinley who made Leonard Wood
the Governor-General of Cuba. Here he revealed his
surprising versatility. Cuba had known Wood as the
Colonel of the Rough Riders and ^'Teddy" Roosevelt
as the Lieutenant-Colonel. Fate yanked Roosevelt into
the President's chair a year later; and he did not for-
get Wood. The man who at Las Guasimas had deliber-

MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 257

ately exposed himself to a withering fire from the
Spaniards so that his men would be steeled to battle
pitch, turned to the pursuits of peace. Wood gave
Cuba laws. His railroad law has been pronounced a
model of legislation. He gave the island good roads,
the city of Santiago paved streets, and he extirpated
yellow-fever. Under Wood, Americans and Europeans
could visit Cuba without fearing the plague. He gave
the Cubans a sense of law and order and civic pride.
He was a master builder and a diplomat.

In Cuba the Church was bitter at the Americans for
having parted Church and State and divested the arch-
bishop of his accustomed revenues. Leonard Wood be-
gan to make friends among the priests. A man de-
scended from New England Puritans hobnobbed with
the dignitaries of a church to which all his early re-
ligious teachings Avere opposed. Once more he effaced
self for the good of America. He steered his course so
diplomatically that when the new archbishop of San-
tiago was appointed Leonard Wood was invited to take
a prominent place in the triumphal procession and found
that the place of honor at the side of the archbishop,
under the canopy, was his. And while the shades of
his Puritan ancestors must have squirmed. Wood
marched in the church procession and laid at rest all
feeling of hostility for America.

After his success in Cuba, Leonard Wood was sent to
the Philippines to handle a far more difiicult task —
the pacification of Mindanao. His was the job to wipe
out the lawlessness of twenty Moro tribes, to earn
their good will, and to transform a place of head-hunt-

258 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

ing and polygamy into a clean American colony with.
public schools. He did it. Had he been merely a
warrior he would have succeeded. He would have
stamped out lawlessness, but it would have remained
stamped out only as long as the natives saw sentries
with fixed bayonets. But Wood pacified a province,
transforming bitter enemies into loyal friends.

On his journey to savage Mindanao, Wood did not
mull over military things. He stopped off in India,
Ceylon, Java, and the Straits Settlements and other col-
onies. He was studying colonial administration,
obtaining the best ideas of British and Dutch officials,
inspecting their work, checking up their methods by
visiting and talking with the natives. One day in Ma-
nila a friend from America called on Wood. He saw
bookshelves that filled three walls of Wood's office,
shelves filled with statistics and reports on colonial
government.

"That's a fine collection," said his friend, ^'but when
do you expect to get time to read through all that
stuff?"

"Read them!" replied Wood, "I've already read
every line of them ; they have helped me."

He made himself ready for the job, just as in recent
years he has studied deeply American national life, all
the forces which will make or unmake us as a nation.

Leonard Wood has the gift of making men love him.
When he went to the Philippines he had to pacify not
only the Moros, but American officers and soldiers
blindly prejudiced because of his rapid promotion.
Jealous rivals had whispered that he was a White

MAJOR-GENEEAL LEONARD WOOD 259

House pet; a doctor^ not a soldier. Here is what an
officer, who was with him in the island, said :

^'Pretty soon that part of the army began to realize
that he was a hustler ; that he knew a good deal about
the soldier's game; that he did things and did them
right; that when he sent troops into the field, he went
along with them, and when they had to eat hardtack
and bacon, he did it, too ; that when there were swamps
to plod through, he was right along with them; that
when reveille sounded before daybreak, he was usually
up and dressed before us; that when a man was do^\Ti
and out, and he happened to be near, he'd get off his
horse and see what the matter was and fix the fellow
up if he could; that he had a pleasant word for all
hands, from the Colonel down to the teamster or packer ;
that when he gave an order it was a sensible one, and
that he didn't change it after it went out, and that he
remembered a man who did a good piece of work, and
showed his appreciation at every chance."

It would seem as if there was something almost
fatalistic in the merging of the careers of Theodore
Roosevelt and Leonard Wood. Both Roosevelt and
Wood were deep thinkers upon the subject of American-
ism; but Roosevelt was a vociferous spokesman, while
Wood, with that self-effacement which characterized
the man in the affairs of his country and of Roosevelt,
kept somewhat in the background. Eloquent he is,
tremendously so. He has a way of saying things in a
few words which hit hard with unpleasant truth. When
we were in that aloof state of mind with ^'business just
as usual" in the spring of 1917, he said, "We have got

260 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

to bring live men to France and bring back dead men."
His words stunned the Nation, drove home to people
how serious the war was. Wood feared fatuous con-
fidence.

Leonard Wood knew the power of the German war-
machine. Like Roosevelt, he had sat on a horse be-
side the Kaiser in peace time and watched the mighty
legions of the Hun go through the mimic attacks, which
a few years later they launched at an unready world.
He realized when war came to us that we were to be
engaged in no child's play. He had a clear compre-
hension of the task confronting us months before the
Italian debacle of 1917. And of these things he
deemed it his duty to speak. Before he took charge of
Camp Funston, appalled at the way our preparations
for war were hesitating, disturbed at the outlook in
ordnance and the quartermaster's department, realiz-
ing that ours was a race against time, that we must put
a powerful army on the battle line before the Allies
were worn down^ he roused the country with a speech
which graphically depicted ^^the blonde beast trampling
over Europe." He feared the spirit taking root, that
^^America can lick the earth." He saw his soldiers
of Camp Funston drilling in civilian clothes and with
baseball bats. He dreaded the red tape in the machin-
ery of our war preparations which was holding back uni-
forms and rifles. He knew that debates were being
held on the kind of machine guns to be made instead of
placing the orders for the guns. Time and again, see-
ing only the future of the l^ation, he caused a message
of ^^speed" to be flashed throughout the country. This

MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 261

was like Wood. He detested red tape and armchair-
warriors. He remembered the Spanish-American war
and the remark a General made to him at that time:
"Here I had a magnificent system, my office and de-
partment were in good working order, and this con-
founded war comes along and breaks it all up."

Wood knew that similar-thinking men were in power
in Washington, and he feared their inefficiency when
he thought of the German war-machine. The men
ultimately w^alked the plank. It was Wood who in-
curred their wrath by appearing in the Senate and tell-
ing the truth about our preparations, mincing no words,
and causing the American people to demand action.
He knew that this would get him into trouble with the
armchair-generals of our army, whose political power
was strong.. But he deemed it his duty to tell the
American people the truth about the situation. He
has always decided what was the right thing to do, and
then had the courage to do it.

Thirty-five years ago, when he was not in the army,
when he had just received his diploma from the Har-
vard Medical School, he revealed this trait in his char-
acter. As an interne in a Boston hospital he was re-
quired to send for the visiting surgeon in all cases re-
quiring immediate operation, and was himself for-
bidden to do the work. One day an infant was brought
in in such a perilous condition that death might result
from any delay. Leonard Wood decided that the right
thing to do was to operate at once. He knew he would
get into trouble if he did not wait for the visiting sur-
geon. He operated — carefully, fearlessly, success-

262 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

fully. Five minutes later the visiting surgeon walked
into the room and demanded an explanation and apol-
ogy. Wood's reply was, ^^I saw that the right thing
to do was to operate at once. I did it."

But he would not apologize for having done right.
He was first suspended and then dismissed — a reward
which in one form or another has seemed to follow
that thing in his character which instantly recognizes
the right thing to do and courageously bids him do it.

Leonard Wood believed in his own words — ^^a plas-
ter over a man's mouth is as useful as eloquence within
it." It is probable that his stoical will to sentence him-
self to silence in times of stress has endeared Leonard
Wood to the American people. When, without public
explanation, this man, who, with Theodore Roosevelt,
had roused the American people to the need of military
preparedness, whom the I^ation regarded, not without
reason, as the ablest organizer in our army, with the
declaration of war with Germany looming but a few
weeks away, was suddenly transferred to an obscure
post in the South, he said nothing. Merely to reporters
who asked him to make a statement, he said, ^^I obey
orders." When war came and Wood, the foremost man
in our military establishment — our senior Major-Gen-
eral, a Chief of Staff — was left to cool his heels in
Charleston, S. C, while another General was placed in
command of the American Expeditionary Force, he
said nothing.

When on the eve of sailing for France with the 89th
Division, which he had built out of raw material into
the best division of the ISTational Army, he was suddenly

MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 263

relieved of command and ordered to a desk job in San
Francisco, he said nothing. But he did go to Washing-
ton to plead with President Wilson that he be allowed
to lead these men whom he had trained into action. A
special board of military surgeons had pronounced him
"fit." President Wilson listened to Wood's plea of
justice and Wood did not have to go to San Francisco,
but he did not go to France. He was ordered back to
Camp Funston to train troops. And all anybody could
get Wood to say was, "All that I feel privileged to say
regarding my talk with the President is that he was
very courteous and very considerate."

And so he went back to the Kansas plains, while the
great army that he had long urged, commanded by
officers made in a vast school of his own conception —
the "Plattsburg idea" ' — went into battle and won.

"I am leaving for Camp Funston to-morrow," said
Wood, when his plea to be allowed to fight was turned
down, "where I shall give the best that is in me to the
training of the boys who will be ordered to that camp."
And he did. Not a word of protest out of him. Had
he wished to speak, he could have stirred the country.
"I obey orders." The disappointment was heart-
breaking; another man might have sulked in his tent.
"I will give the best there is in me," said the man who
stayed home.

When the news came to the men of his division that
Leonard Wood was not to lead them in France, they
were bitter. When he returned from Washington,
every officer in Camp Funston was waiting to greet him.
Realizing their youth, sincerity, and loyalty to him.

264 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

Wood once more diplomatically effaced self. He told
them not to concern themselves with his case, but to
give all that was in them to the great task before them,
and to think of nothing else. ^'There isn't anything to
be said," he told them ; ^^these orders stand, and the only
thing to do is to do the best we can — all of us — to
win the war."

Theodore Roosevelt is credited with having said:
"Others talked about building the Panama Canal. I
did it." Speaking of Leonard Wood's achievement in
transforming Cuba into a clean, up-to-date, law-abiding
country, Theodore Roosevelt said: "He was put down
there to do an absolutely new task. He did it." The
resemblance between the two men is amazing — little
talk, much action, big results. Roosevelt the man is
dead, but in Wood his spirit lives. And that spirit,
that same fearlessness to do right, that same gift of
looking ahead and being ready, the same tenacity and
determination, that same deep Americanism, is going
to bring Leonard Wood to — what ?

In 1916 a man, a party leader in Republican poli-
tics, sat at the end of a long-distance telephone in a
committee room of the convention hall in Chicago.
At the other end was Theodore Roosevelt. "If I can-
not be nominated I will support. Leonard Wood," Roose-
velt had told that man a few days before in conference
at Oyster Bay. And now it was the eleventh hour of
the convention, and the fight between the Roosevelt and
Hughes supporters was almost at a deadlock, with
Hughes slightly in the lead. "You cannot be nomi-
nated," said the man at the 'phone.

MAJOR-GENEKAL LEONARD WOOD 265

The voice from Oyster Bay — tlie voice that never
yielded to defeat — answered in its shrill staccato : ^^I
am the only man who can win the election on the Re-
publican ticket — fight on/' and the 'phone clicked.

Hughes was nominated. Leonard Wood's name was
not put before the convention. It was withdrawn at his
own request. That was Wood, the friend — Wood, the
man.

Hughes was defeated. Many things have happened
since then. Major-General Wood did not go to France
in command, neither was his friend Theodore Roosevelt
permitted to go. Again their lives paralleled. Wood,
the father of the Plattsburg idea, the apostle of pre-
paredness, the great organizer and soldier, "stood by"
during the Great War. His services in the East, the
South, and the West were the services of a great organ-
izer and trainer of men. Then suddenly out of the air
sprang a "Wood League for Presidency." It popped
up in various states from Maine to California. 'No
one sponsored it ; it was spontaneous — the tribute of
the people to the great soldier and executive, a tribute
to Wood's great character as an American.

Eor days at the Chicago convention Major-General
Wood's name was in the lead, for the nomination of
President of the United States on the Republican
ticket. But the party was divided. Wood was not a
politician. He did not try to compromise. The two
opponents joined their interests in favor of a "dark
horse," and the man who had by large odds the greatest
number of delegates stepped aside.

ISTo sooner was the campaign on than Major-Gen-

266 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

eral Wood's voice was raised in support of the "dark
horse" nominee, Warren G. Harding.

Quietly, after election days were over, he returned
to his Chicago headquarters. Hardly had the new ad-
ministration at Washington come into power, when
an acute condition arose in the Philippines. At once
President Harding placed Major-General Wood at the
head of a commission to report and make recommenda-
tions. On the heels of his report Leonard Wood was
designated by the President as Governor-General of
the Islands.

At sixty-one years of age, he took over the governor-
ship and reconstruction of affairs in our turbulent pos-
sessions in the Pacific. Welcomed by the native and
the white man alike, his success in the Philippines is a
foregone conclusion.

Leonard Wood's greatest achievement is the love and
confidence of the American people. His stern sense of
duty, his Spartan character and his cumulative achieve-
ments as a man, a soldier and an administrator, give
him a permanent place in history, resplendent with
honor and glory.

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES
(1862 )

A GEEAT AMERICAN STATESAIAN

Copyright by Harris & Ewing

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES

THS NEW YCRK
P9BUC LIBRARY

-*«T01^, LENOX
DEN FOXT^DATTOn?

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES

(1862 )

A GREAT AMERICAN STATESMAN

THE Secretary of State is the custodian of
National honor. He represents, officially, the
character of the Nation. Public opinion, there-
fore, is an important consideration in the Presi-
dent's mind when he makes this appointment in his
Cabinet, for the Secretary of State must stand before
the country as something more than a political cham-
pion of his party, he must pass muster for certain
acknowledged qualities of statesmanship. His name
must represent leadership. He must qualify not only
for his abilities as executive head of one of the chief
departments of government, but his name must con-
vey to the people a personal force of character.

No one will deny that Mr. Hughes's acceptance of the
portfolio of Secretary of State offered him by President
Harding impressed the people of the United States
with an assurance of safety and wisdom in the conduct
of this branch of the President's administration. Mr.
Hughes represented those high aims of National pa-
triotism and sense of honor that are embodied in the
Constitution.

In short, as Secretary of State, Mr. Hughes demon-
strates the type of American, that, rounded out by years

269

270 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

of maturity, can become an incorrnptible character of
manly principles. He is an example for the generation
of young men who, like himself, began life with no
worldly advantages to speak of. He rose to the dis-
tinguished office because he grew up under no other in-
fluences than those he created for himself as he climbed
the ladder of his career.

It is interesting to see how, as a boy, a young man, a
lawyer, a Governor, a Judge of the highest Court of
Appeals, he reached the unique reputation for states-
manship he holds in public opinion. It may help to
indicate that character is the supreme opportunity of
success in life, for young men.

Mr. Hughes was never a spectacular figure in public
life. Like his father, who was a Baptist minister, he
had the plain, level, straightforward vision of the plain
people. As a child he cared most of all for knowledge.
As a young teacher he studied; as a young lawyer he
exposed ; as a Governor he reformed public service ; as
a Judge he grew young in clarifying legal tangles. His
whole character has been the native dignity of a plain
American who sets justice and wholesome purpose in
i^ational affairs above everything else. In him was
the independence that makes leaders among men.
Leadership is a gift. It was demonstrated in Mr.
Hughes, in childhood, as the following recollection of
his first school-days demonstrates.

A delicate, serious, but determined little boy of five
years of age was being dressed for his first day at
school. It was in Glens Falls, ^ew York, where he
was born, and the event was very important to his father

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 271

and mother. His father, seeing how solemn the little
boj was, whispered to his mother to let him off, but his
mother who had herself been a school-teacher insisted
that he must go. So, with his slate and his books under
his arm, he was met at the gate of the house where his
parents lived, by another little boy, slightly older, who
took charge of him. He took hold of his hand, and as
they went down the street together his father and
mother watched them from the doorstep till they were
out of sight.

"It was with some heart-burnings that we saw him
trudge down the street," his father said, recalling the
incident.

For the first two weeks, he seemed to enjoy the school
immensely. He came home each day with a great
deal to tell his parents about his lessons. Very soon,
however, they noticed that he grew rather silent about
them. One day he walked into his father's study and
handed him a paper on which was written "Charles E.
Hughes' Plan of Study." It was a list of studies and
the hours and days on which each subject was to be
taken up. His father asked him what it meant.

"Father," said the little boy, "I don't want to go to
school any more. The scholars are very slow in getting
their lessons and the teacher goes over the same old
thing time after time. I would like to study at home
with you and mother, and I am sure I would have more
time to play."

One can look across the desk in the State Depart-
ment in Washington at the frank, engaging presence of
Mr. Hughes, and realize that his decisions or his plans

272 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

are conceived with equal independence, because lie is
intrinsically self-reliant. His education began at home.
His mother taught him mathematics, his father Greek
and Latin. When he was ten or twelve years old he
had found out the value of books. Curiosity, a greed
for knowledge, developed studious habits. His boy-
hood was spent in a daily routine of lessons. His im-
agination was in books, especially scientific works. He
spent more time in study than he did at play.

He was a great traveler when he was a child, in imag-
ination. One of his favorite amusements, on rainy
days, was to go up into the attic of his home and sit
there with a big railroad map spread on his knees. In
this way he would follow the black lines on the map,
read the names of the towns marked do^\^l, and imagine
what those towns must look like. Especially he liked
to read books about travel and adventure.

His father, being a Baptist minister, was often moved
from one church to another, so that the boy grew up in
many parts of ^ew York State and JSTew Jersey. He
went to school in Newark, l!^. J., for a short while.
Finally his father settled in 'New York City, and he
went to Public School 35, on Thirteenth Street, where
there were a great many boys who went to school with
him who became famous men afterwards.

The intention of his parents was that their son
should become a Baptist minister. He himself wanted
to be one. He was always very serious, and used often
to discuss the points in his father's sermon after church,
to find out some things he didn't understand. Until he
grew up to be a young man it was his ambition to be

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 273

a minister. Even when he was only seven years old he
wrote religious articles which he used to show his father
for his approval.

When he went to the public school in ISTew York he
was only twelve years old, but he was already so ad-
vanced in the education he had received at home, that
he was at once put in a class with boys much older than
himself. He won several prizes for composition while
he was at this school, usually choosing very serious sub-
jects. His mind seemed to be far beyond his years.
He wrote, at that age, on subjects that most boys don't
even think about. One of his compositions was called,
''The Limitation of the Human Mind," and another
''The Evils of Light Literature."

Every one noticed one particular thing about Charlie
Hughes in school, he did everything thoroughly. He
did his work with an ambition to do it better than any
one else. That was the chief thing about him. He
thought more about work than he did about play and he
was only thirteen when he received his certificate of
graduation from Public School 35. He wanted to
enter 'New York City College at once, but he was not
old enough. So he changed his plans, and took a five
years' course of private tutoring with his father. His
character and the greatest part of his education he
owes to his father and mother.

"When he went to Hamilton College, ^N". Y., to take a
theological course, it was still his intention to be a
Baptist minister. Two years later he went to Brown
University, in Providence, R. I. His first year was
easy, because he already knew before he entered all

274 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

there was to learn in that grade. It was always easy
for Charlie Hughes to learn. He was not a close stu-
dent because he had the faculty of mastering any sub-
ject so quickly. In appearance then he was a stocky,
steady, amiable youth. He wore his hair in the pom-
padour style of that time, and a slight mustache ap-
peared on his upper lip. In college he was called
'^Huggie" for short, a name given him by his college
chums.

It is said of Mr. Hughes, the dignified, somewhat
austere Secretary of State, that no man ever ^'slapped
him on the back" ; and yet ''Huggie" must have been
very popular, for he became an active member of the
Delta Upsilon fraternity throughout his college course.
In fact he held a prominent place among its members,
traveling to other colleges to enroll new ones. He
seized the social advantages of college life with the same
quick grasp with which he later understood how to
disentangle the problems of financial affairs that he in-
vestigated when he was counsel for the legislative com-
mittees investigating the Insurance Companies and the
Gas Trust of New York.

Anything that demanded investigation interested
him. During his term at Brown University he visited
the courts and listened to the arguments of the lawyers.
He became fascinated with what he heard, the clever
way the lawyers prosecuted for or defended their clients.
Often he discussed these cases with his college chums,
and his arguments impressed them with their logical,
quick analysis. They advised him to become a lawyer,
and he went to his parents and asked them if he might

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 275

change his plans to be a minister and study law instead.
Both his father and mother were disappointed. His
father, remembering this important event vividly, said :

"It was not until his Junior year that the trend of
his mind changed, owing to the circumstances in which
he was thro^vn. By chance, he attended the trial of
several lawsuits in his college town and the love of law
lying dormant in him was developed. He finally re-
solved to take up the legal profession, but not before
consulting his parents. We at once saw that the law
had become a passion with him, and we withdrew any
objections we might have had to his becoming a law-
yer. He was pleased with our consent and threw him-
self heart and soul into the study of Blackstone."

He decided all the important things in his life for
himself. Before going to Brown University he had
studied its curriculum, and liked it better than any
other. It was his own wish to go there. One of his
handicaps as a young man in college was his aptitude
for everything he touched. His teachers noticed this,
and noticed what strict attention he paid to his work,
in classes and out of them. The fact was, he had de-
veloped a remarkable gift of concentration, of apply-
ing his whole mind to the subject he was mastering at
the time. He was a calm, well poised, cheerful student.
His invariable cheerfulness of manner was noticeable to
his teachers. He went at his work as if he enjoyed every
minute of it. And he was inquisitive about it. He
was not satisfied with theories; he wanted to experi-
ment for himself, to reach his own conclusions. He
was intensely practical about everything. Theories had

276 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

to be pulled to pieces before he could accept tbem. In
college he demonstrated the manners and habits of
mind that showed him to be a born leader. College
athletics had not been introduced into college life in
those days, so that he had no opportunity to be a
football expert, but he was a leader in all other college
interests. He excelled in literary knowledge and com-
position, and especially in the executive details of his
fraternity. His judgment on matters of college enter-
tainment was always sought. He soon rose to the ex-
ecutive council of his fraternity, and was elected presi-
dent, which put him in control of the Delta Upsilon
fraternities of the entire country.

Having taken the prizes for literature and for ^'gen-
eral attainment," he was graduated, delivering the vale-
dictory address. He looked so young at this time that
various attempts he made to secure a job as teacher
failed. As soon as the college authorities where he
applied saw him, they smiled and insisted that he
was too young to manage a class of young men. He
concluded finally to apply by letter. He secured an
engagement as a teacher at the Delaware Academy in
Delhi, ]^. J., where he presented himself to the presi-
dent of the academy to teach Greek and mathematics.
He was received with surprise. Dr. Griffin looked at
him with a pained expression and said to him :

^'My dear young man, there is no doubt about your
ability to teach the branches for which you have been
engaged, but how do you expect to rule the young gentle-
men who will come under your charge ?"

He did so very successfully, and having earned a

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 277

little money which he needed to help him in his plans
to enter Columhia Law School, he returned to E'ew
York. At Columbia he obtained a free scholarship of
$500 which helped him materially. He was gradu-
ated from Columbia when he was twenty-two, and was
admitted to the bar the same year. His youthful ap-
pearance, he decided, would be a handicap to him in
his profession, so he promptly met that issue in his
usual practical way, and grew a beard.

Talking with a friend, he himself told the story of
how he obtained his first job in a law office.

''One of the fellows in the Law School asked me one
Jay if I wanted to get into a fine law office," he said.
''I said I didn't mind. It was a chance. Next day
he introduced me to Mr. Carter, the senior member of
Chamberlin, Carter and Hornblower. Mr. Carter,
fortunately, was fond of young men, believed in them.
He talked to me a good deal about his hobbies. One
of them was German universities. The first thing he
began to talk about after we were introduced was the
advantage to a young man at the University of Heidel-
berg. I agreed with him, but as I had a living to
make, the principal thing I wanted to know was whether
I could get a job in his office. He seemed to like my
practical style. It was not long before I was working
hard on briefs."

Mr. Hughes supplemented his work in this office,
teaching special classes for Columbia students. His
health broke down from overwork and he accepted a
professorship of law at the Cornell University in Ithaca,
]Sr. Y. After two years in the open country he went

278 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

back to work in the same law office, restored to health.
He became a lecturer at Columbia. During his law
practice, he married Mr. Carter's daughter. This was
in 1888, when he had already established himself as a
strong man in her father's office. It was a strength he
had carefully built up during years of patient attention
to the details of character, a strict devotion to duty.
His care to neglect no opportunity was noticeable from
the first day he applied for a position as teacher.

Thus far there is much in the early part of Mr.
Hughes's career to encourage young men of modern edu-
cation and ability. What follows demonstates the uni-
versal theme of leadership, the evolution of strong char-
acter force. As this young lawyer's practice in the
courts increased, it became noised about that he was
incorruptibly honest. As to his methods, there was
none of the brow-beating, none of the contemptuous
insult prevalent among some lawyers. There was no
overwhelming oratory. Politeness was his weapon in
cross-examination, persistency in place of sarcasm, and
a conciseness of development that forced a witness to
state facts. Because the invaluable trend of his char-
acter was honesty, Mr. Hughes became a IN'ational hu-
man magnet for those who wanted to get at the truth.
He was selected as special counsel for investigating com-
mittees. In exposing the system of ^^syndicate trans-
actions" among directors of insurance companies, he
lifted the lid of money-combinations of which directors
became wealthy through opportunities which came to
them in their control of the huge investments of the in-
surance companies. He punctured the vicious circle of

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 279

"mutual" corporations, and so spread a searchlight over
a National evil that was growing. His brilliant ex-
posure of the "Gas Trust" had brought him National
recognition. He was forty-three when he became a
potential leader of character. Work had become a
habit. He often returned to his office after dinner and
worked until midnight.

Besides intrepid honesty, Mr. Hughes insisted al-
ways upon personal liberty in handling his investiga-
tions.

"I will undertake this work,'' he said to the chair-
man of an investigating committee, "provided I am not
interfered with in any way in getting at the root of
the matter."

He declined the offer to run for the office of Mayor of
New York, a political pillory he wisely escaped. When
accepting the nomination for Governor of the State of
New York, he said :

"I shall accept my nomination without pledge other
than to do my duty according to my conscience. If
elected, it will be my effort to give the State a sane,
efficient and honorable administration, free from taint
of bossism, or of servitude to any private interest."

Politically, as Governor, Mr. Hughes was indiffer-
ent. He declined to make political appointments and
he refused to hold secret conferences where political
"deals" might be made. There were sharp battles be-
tween the Governor and the Legislature. If the latter
refused to pass a bill, he would say, "Very well, I shall
appeal to the people direct," and forthwith he would
call mass meetings and address them himself. The

280 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

Legislature ridiculed these appeals, for wliat effect could
thej have upon the power of the Legislature to oppose a
bill?

Governor Hughes would not stoop to political treach-
ery, nor would he hide the ideals he had in mind from
the people. These special mass meetings were his
safety-valve. He replied to those who criticized them,
"I am attorney for the people.''

In the shallow water of local State politics, Mr.
Hughes floundered angrily sometimes.

"I have shown the politicians they do not control me ;
now I propose showing the newspapers they cannot
shape my actions.'' After a second term as Governor,
in which Mr. Hughes said he wanted only to finish
some reforms he had started the previous term, he was
appointed an associate justice of the United States
Supreme Court by Mr. Taft, who was then President.

In 1916, the Republican Party, believing that the
people would rally to the leadership of Mr. Hughes,
fijially coaxed him from the sacred zone of high office
in the Supreme Court to accept the nomination for the
Presidency. He polled a vote large enough to con-
firm the opinion of the Republican Party, but was de-
feated at election by Woodrow Wilson.

Mr. Hughes may be regarded as a "conscript" in
politics, conscripted for service to the Nation rather
than for service to political entanglements. He became
the Presidential nominee because the people wanted
him. Mr. Harding's election, four years later, made
it possible to "conscript" Mr. Hughes again in the I^a-
tional service of his country, as Secretary of State.

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 281

In an address which he delivered in Washington while
he was on the bench of the United States Supreme Court,
Justice Hughes epitomized his own success in states-
manship and character. Speaking of the American
flag he said :

"It means that you cannot be saved by the valor and
devotion of your ancestors; that to each generation
comes its patriotic duty ; that upon your willingness to
sacrifice and endure, as those before you — rests the Na-
tional hope."

WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING

(1865 )

PEESIDENT — CHAMPION OF SOUND
AMERICANISM

WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING

, WS fiEW Y9RK

WAEREN GAMALIEL HARDING

(1865 )

PRESIDENT — CHAMPION OF SOUND
AMERICANISM

WAKREN GAMALIEL HARDING twenty-
ninth President of the United States, elected
November 2d, 1920, is an inspiring figure to
young men because he represents above and beyond all
other expectations of him, a safe and sound American
citizenship. Mr. Harding's service to the people had
no other precedent but that, before his nomination, to
recommend him. His life had been consistently
normal, healthy, intelligent, conservatively Ameri-
can. When he stood before the country, after his
nomination by the Republican Convention in Chicago,
there was six feet of presentable Americanism, solid
and sound in character. As the people looked over
the open book of his life, they read between the lines,
over and over again, tiie assurance that if they elected
him, he would perpetuate the unselfish, high-minded
record of America for Americans that had been his
creed from boyhood.

There were no spectacular promises, no boastings, no
threats in his pre-election campaign. He made no plea
for original standards in National government nor did

285

286 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

he enthrone himself with superior pomp of manner.
He had made himself a distinguished public speaker
during his term in the Senate, so he was able to meet
the people from the platform with eloquence. If there
was one thing more than another that was noticeably in
his favor, it was his inborn quality of thinking and
talking to them in friendly counsel about the need of
restoring the principles of equal franchise, of econ-
omy, of dignity in our relations, and mutual helpful-
ness.

Mr. Harding successfully overcame the handicap of
party feeling which swept the country against the Demo-
cratic party (an element in his election which accumu-
lated a majority of 7,000,000 votes), by winning for
himself a personal respect for his agreeable tolerance,
an outstanding element of his character. He was
equipped for the high office he reached by inheritance
no greater than that which many thousands of young
men possess to-day. He did not arrive at the White-
House through superior education, or any exceptional
advantages by birth or fortune. His ambition was not
an over-reaching force that pushed him up the ladder of
fame. He seems to have moved along the way of life
with singular contentment, satisfied to conduct him-
jjelf towards others always with consideration.

Mr. Harding inherited these traditions from his
parents, especially his mother. He was born in Cor-
sica, Ohio. His early life, his training and above all
his inheritance of amiable, intelligent, tolerant char-
acter have contributed to his present high place in the
world. That place was tenderly, industriously, in his

WAREEN GAMALIEL HARDING 287

mother's mind for him when he was a babj. The
comradeship that existed between the child and the
mother was the most genuine and affectionate impulse
of Mr. Harding's life. She was an ardent member of
the Seventh Day Adventists, and the best versed woman
in Sacred and Bible history in her community, a highly
cultured, well read, progressive woman.

She was Elizabeth Dickerson. An old daguerreotype
of the Cival War days shows her at the age, serene
and sweet, of sixteen, standing behind a solemn, serious
young man, Tj^ron Harding (the President's father),
also sixteen. This record of their romance reveals one
thing, that the son takes his unusually handsome looks
from his mother. After his mother's engagement, she
insisted that they wait a year. After they were mar-
ried, they began life in a little frame house in the
small village of Blooming Grove near Caledonia, Ohio.
Blooming Grove was so called because of its great va-
riety of flowers in summer. Mrs. Harding, the Presi-
dent's mother, had a passion for flowers all her life.
Long after she had left the little house, when she had
grown old, her son never forgot to see that she always
had flowers in her room, till she died. They kept alive
so many treasured memories of those first years in her
son's life, when she dreamed a future for him that came
true. As mothers are prone to expect wonderful things
of their sons, Mrs. Harding had no mediocre expecta-
tions for hers.

When he was only a baby, she used to whisper the
big secret in her heart to him. Wlien he grew to the
serious age of seven, when he could read, and argue

288 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

and look wise, she used to say to him just as if she was
sure of it:

^'Warren, stay with your books and some day you
will be President of the United States."

The truth of her prophecy did not dawn on him
then, but it has never been forgotten. It came true
for many reasons. His father's explanation of it is
one reason:

^^Call it luck, or destiny, or what you will, things
come right for some people and they came right for
Warren. I ascribe it to his genuine, unassuming, good-
natured way of dealing with people and with problems.
I never knew Warren to use hard words or get into
jangles to amount to anything."

His antecedents were strong men and women. The
Harding name appears in the famous English Dooms-
day Book of 1086. To America they came at least a
century before the Revolution. Before 1650, one
Harding had settled in Boston, another in Salem, Mas-
sachusetts, and another in Connecticut. Dr. Harding's
family are direct descendants.

Probably not much significance has been attached to
this ancestry in the Hardings of Ohio. They have not
given it much thought, if any. The fact that the name
is now immortalized in the White House is suificient
proof that there should be ancestors worth having.
However, Warren Gamaliel Harding belongs to the
twentieth century, a man who has in him the growth
and strength of the Middle West, which spreads its in-
fluence and its men and women from coast to coast in
enterprise, in production, in business industry, and in

WAEREN GAMALIEL HARDING 289

patriotic positiveness. Among the Middle Western
States, Ohio has produced many notable figures.
McKinley came from the State, and Mr. Harding has
been compared to his predecessor from Ohio. It is in
the foreground of a new generation, of awakening world
ideals, that this son, of Ohio stands in the White
House to-day.

Precociousness is not unusual among children in
America. It is related in a recollection which Dr.
Harding, the President's father, tells with unblushing
pride, that his first-born learned his alphabet when he
was four years old. Such incidents never lose their im-
portance.

"I was away from home for the day,'' said Dr. Hard-
ing, recalling his son's triumph, "and our young son,
now arrived at the dignity of kilts and underpants,
laid his hand on his mother's knee as she was sewing
before the fireplace.

" 'Mother, I want to learn to read,' he said as
seriously as a preacher. And so Phoebe got a long-
piece of cardboard, the bottom of a shoe box, I think,
and drew it off in squares and marked all the capital
letters with a stick of charred wood from the fire,
and Warren learned his A, B, C's, all of 'em, before I
got home for supper."

His father justly regarded him, after this feat, as
a "quick study." He could memorize long poems be-
fore he was four years old, and his greatest ambition in
childhood, wherever he went, was "to speak a piece."
This talent was, very noticeable in the boy Harding, for
he took the utmost pleasure in reciting to an audience.

290 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

^'Mother, will it do for me to speak my piece now V^
was the invariable question on his mind whenever they
took him to see the neighbors. He was, of course, en-
couraged to recite. He enjoyed the applause, and usu-
ally made an elaborate bow, when he had finished.
His father never recalls an occasion when he had stage-
fright, or was ever embarrassed by strangers. It came
natural to him to address crowds and he enjoyed it.

Mother love guided the boy in all his problems of
childhood and manhood. His devotion to his mother
in her old age was as tender as hers had been for him
in his childhood. He saw that she had fresh flowers
in her room every Sunday, no matter whether he was
at home or away, until she died in 1910. He usually
took the flowers to her himself. Since her death her
son in the White House still clings to the thought — the
fresh flowers on the President's table on Sunday recall
her memory and hold it sacred.

He spent most of his boyhood doing what a small-
town farm boy would do — chores. Up to the age of
sixteen, with the exception of reciting, he was occupied
with the more or less commonplace but useful task of
earning extra money by odd jobs, milking, working in
the fields, painting fences, driving a team. He was
very large for his age, shy, awkward as big boys often
are ; and very serious, with an inclination to write, with
sudden outbursts of poetry. He learned to set type be-
fore he was sixteen in the office of the Blooming Grove
Argus. It was an ambitious little village, for it boasted
of its own brass band, in which the President played a
tenor horn. It is claimed by some recorders of this

WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 291

period of the President's youth that he really played the
comet, while others insist that it was a trombone, the
"sliphorn'' as they used to call it. Upon the event of
the opening ceremonies of the Erie Railroad in Chicago,
Warren Gamaliel Harding went with the band, at a
cost of $2.40, in a helmet and uniform. It was the
first parade the President ever saw, in a large city.

He was graduated from Central Ohio College, which
was formerly located in Iberia, Ohio, though to-day it
no longer exists. There he earned the degree of Doctor
of Laws. But, in the memory of those in Iberia who
knew him, the great achievement in Mr. Harding's
term at college was the splendid coat of paint he gave
the door of Dr. Virtue's office. The village people for
a long while referred with pride to this bit of paint-
brush art, saying how well its color had lasted
though painted ''forty years ago by Warren Harding."

During his son's college days, Mr. Harding's father
had leased a small farm near Iberia from which, after
his son's graduation, he moved to Marion, Ohio. The
President had picked up, besides some learning, the
trades of house-painting, farming, bricklaying, construc-
tion work on a railroad, and printing.

It was while he was working as a teamster for Mr.
Payne in the construction of the Marion and Benton,
Ohio, Railroad, that he was courting Mrs. Harding.
He was then almost eighteen, just at the close of his
college career.

Por a time Mr. Harding worked as a printer on a
Democratic newspaper. He even wrote locals for this
paper, which was the beginning of his career as an

292 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

editor. Both he and his father, however, were strong
supporters of James G. Blaine, the Republican candi-
date. One morning the young printer came to work in
the Democratic printing office wearing a Blaine cam-
paign hat. He was promptly dismissed. When he was
nineteen, with Jack Warwick, another printer, he
bought out the Marion Star, then a struggling news-
paper. He set his own editorials, and addressed the
wrappers to the subscribers. The responsibilities of an
editor were explained to him by his father.

"I told Warren when he bought the Star that I
didn't want him to abuse people.'' his father said. '^I
don't know whether the advice was necessary or just
thrown in for good measure. At any rate, that is the
policy he followed . . . for the thirty odd years that
he had owned the Star he did so without the vilifica-
tion of anybody in any issue of it. That was what I
tried to inculcate in Warren as a little boy and as a
young man. If you can't say good about a person,
keep silent, and after a while your silence has the same
effect and burns even deeper than the abuse. In his
own precinct in Ohio (when he ran for President),
Warren carried it five to one, and when the count was
telephoned from the Court House up to his home, I re-
member, he laughed and said, ^They don't seem to like
me much around here.' "

It was a system in Mr. Harding's election which he
carried out rigidly. He never replied to personal at-
tacks made upon him by political opponents, openly or
secretly.

Mr. Harding's success with two country newspapers

WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 293

gradually brought him into political favor, but he didn't
get his first political appointment till after he had spent
fifteen years in the editorial sanctum in Marion, Ohio.
By that time every man, woman and child knew and
loved him. In 1900, when he was forty, he was elected
to the Ohio State Legislature. He served four years,
and at the end of that time became Lieutenant-Gover-
nor of the State for two years. Four years later, in
1910, he was defeated in his campaign for Governor
of Ohio. Live years elapsed before he was elected
to the United States Senate. He went to Washington
in 1915, and in 1920, was nominated for President of
the United States and elected.

The record is unique in the history of the White
House.

In his quest for information on National topics Mr.
Harding visited Europe three times, studying foreign
systems of government, conditions of labor, and peoples.
Before taking his seat in the United States Senate he
visited the Hawaiian Islands. As a speaker on ques-
tions of economics, agriculture and industrial condi-
tions, he gained a National reputation that paved the
way to his great popularity as a candidate for the Presi-
dency. In the Senate he was known as a brilliant and
convincing speaker, and sponsored a bill for prepared-
ness that won the endorsement of Colonel Roosevelt.
His work on the Committee of Foreign Relations gained
him approval of his party and the people, who recog-
nized his lofty statesmanship and high sense of public
duty, his far-seeing vision and intimate knowledge of
foreign affairs. Shortly after he entered the Senate he

294 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

was selected Chairman of the Republican National Con-
vention. Mr. Harding's reputation for sound qualities
of Americanism, his unyielding principles of justice
and his infallible democracy, good will, and sound eco-
nomics made him a safe and harmonious choice for his
party.

The nomination of the tall, impressive, eloquent per-
sonage at the Republican Convention in Chicago, in
1920, was, however, a surprise. Mr. Harding had not
been a seeker after office. He had resorted to no tricks
of sensationalism to impress the American people.
With the announcement of the nomination, the conven-
tion was given a picture of the next President, Warren
Gamaliel Harding. They saw a handsome man, who
looked to be about fifty, commanding of manner — an
ideal Presidential figure, though less known to the
public than his rivals for the greatest honor cqnferred
by the American people.

Mr. Harding's overwhelming triumph at the polls
confirmed the choice of the convention. In his in-
augural address were revealed his dominant character-
istics as a man of the highest and most admired Amer-
ican type — tolerance and personal liberty. As he
passed from one problem to another, he faced the issues
with calm and deliberate good will. He showed the
rare gift of harmonizing men's views to the broader
ideals of his mind. He looks toward Europe with the
dignified, sympathetic eye of an American who is striv-
ing for the best international relations. He amiably in-
duced a disarmament conference in Washington, to re-
duce the evils of war and taxation. His pacifism was

WAEREN GAMALIEL HAHDING 295

the reaction of a world weary of war — yet unblinded
that the passions and conflicts of men might precipi-
tate it. He is the man of peace, with power to make
war, but with a oneness of purpose towards peace and
prosperity, for the destiny of America in the world's
new affairs, and a neighborly friendliness for nations,
little and big, needing our help at the great period of
reconstruction.

JUDGE KENESAW MOUNTAIN
LANDIS

(1866 )

THE SUPREME COURT OF BASEBALL

Copyright by Moffett, Chicago

JUDGE KENESAW

MOUNTAIN LANDIS

JUDGE KENESAW MOUNTAIN
LANDIS

(1866 )

X THE SUPKEME COUET OF BASEBALL

THE dignity of the Court does not depend upon
the imposing presence of the Judge. He may
be a small, slender, humorous little man, and still
command the fear, affection, and respect of his country,
as Judge Landis always did on the bench. From the
time he was a small boy, till his hair became white,
he was always growing up. There is in his character
the sort of leadership that is not uncommon among
American boys who are born in such humble circum-
stances that they just have to rise. If they don't, no
one ever hears of them. Of course Judge Landis was
the kind of boy who wanted to get ahead in the world
from the very first. He believed in fair play, but he
also had his own ideas of how a boy should advance
himself, which was business-like from the very begin-
ning. His ambitions to be highly educated were not so
strong as his ambitions to go to work for himself. He
wasn't very particular about what kind of work it
should be, either, so long as it offered a good busi-
ness outlook. When he wasn't ^^much bigger than a
grasshopper," as the boys used to say of him, just
running around the hay-wagon, or driving the cattle to

299

300 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

and from the pasture on his father's farm near Logans-
port, Indiana, he came to the conclusion that the proper
use of mathematics was not brought out in the school-
books. Thej said nothing about why a boy had to
learn algebra, when all he needed was a knowledge of
addition and subtraction, with a quick eye for the multi-
plication table. He was intensely practical. He
couldn't see where a knowledge of algebra could be of
any use to him in getting a job. And, after all, that
was his chief absorbing ambition as a school-boy, to get i
out and work for himself. He had an insatiable curi- j
osity to get out into the world, there was so much a /
boy had to find out in life that school told him nothing \
about. ^

Another peculiarity about this little boy was that,
once he reached a conclusion, he acted upon it. He was
a most independent little live-wire from the day
he was born in Millville, Ohio. He seemed to have
come into the world with a determination to make his
own way in it from the start, by going ahead on his
own hook. He was the youngest son of seven children,^
and the other six did everything he wanted them to.
There was something solid, irresistibly solid, about
young Landis, even when he wasn't much higher than
a small corn-stalk; as solid almost as Kenesaw Moun-
tain, a name with which his father christened him for
a reason. It was a good reason, take it all around;
although, when the boy grew up to be a prominent figure
in the world, he did not quite forgive his parents for the
honor they conferred on him, because he was as much
like a mountain as a mole-hill is. In stature and phy-

JUDGE KENESAW M. LANDIS 301

siqne, he was anything but mountainous. Being the
youngest son, there was concentrated in this little boy
all the hope and sentiment of his parents. He became
one of the closing chapters in his father's biography.
Before he was born, the chief thing that had happened
in the life of his father occurred at Kenesaw Mountain
during the Civil War. It was there that his father, a
Union Army surgeon, lost a leg in a surprise attack by
the Confederate troops. It was an event he wished
toTperpetuate in the family, and he thought there would
be no better way than to have a Kenesaw Mountain
Landis of his own, always about the house.

It didn't worry the boy very much, his name was not
anything he expected to succeed with in the world more
than any other American boy he knew. It was a good-
enough name, it was his, and he meant to keep it all
his life. His boy mind was too busy with other things.
The predominating thought, from the time he was per-
haps twelve years old, was to get a job.

There were no jobs in school. There were a lot of
lessons, too, that didn't seem to help one in getting a
job. By the time young Kenesaw Mountain Landis
was fourteen, he looked about as small as an ant-hill
in comparison to a mountain. But he must have felt
as big as one, for he confided to one of his older brothers,
a reporter on a local newspaper, that he 'Wanted a
job." So he began his career of inquisitive interest,
in a search of the truth that brought him to the unique
position in the world of a man whom other men trusted,
a confidence he never betrayed. His curiosity to know,
to see, to understand the true motives of men in the

302 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

world, was born in him. He had more than the or-
dinary curiosity of a boy. It was a trait in him so
highly developed that he had contracted, in boyhood,
the habit of finding out things for himself, quietly,
but at great pains for the accuracy of his investiga-
tions.

That is why, just as the dawn was breaking, a small
boy could have been seen, if any one had been up and
around, with his nose flattened against the window of
the local undertaker's shop, peering in to find out who
was dead in the town that morning. He was scared of
course, and he ran from the place as fast as he could,
once he had satisfied himself that he knew positively
what he wanted to know. Although his job was de-
livering newspapers on a route to the regular sub-
scribers, he didn't trust everything he read in them.
By looking in at the undertaker'^ shop, he was sure
about the accuracy of the obituary news, at least.

A dollar a week was his salary for this ''job," and he
managed always to save a little out of it. That was
the day when a nickel was a lot of money to a boy, when
a cent was a great deal. From contact with the worldli-
ness which a printing-press suggests to an ambitious
youngster, little Kenesaw Mountain began to have long-
ings, growing pains to see something of the world him-
self. Next to the printing-press thei*e was food for
thought in the great steam locomotives that puffed about
the railroad yards with so much noise and power. The
train which went whizzing by the station at Logansport,
full of grown people, decided this boy that a job on the
railroad had great possibilities of adventure beyond,

JUDGE KENESAW M. LANDIS 303

just round the curve of rails beyond the town where the
trains disappeared.

The next step in his career was a railroad job.
Strictly speaking, it wasn't much; it was a long way
from the job of a conductor, for instance, which he
would have liked more than anything. Still, the
bottom of the ladder w^hich he wanted to climb was
better than no ladder to climb up at all. He hired out
as office boy in the train-dispatcher's office of the Van-
dalia Eailroad, with a watchful eye out for a job as
brakeman on freight trains. He'd often heard, of
course, of Indianapolis, the golden gate through which
all country boys in the State hoped to enter the prom-
ised land of manhood and business adventure. There
were many brakemen he had talked with about Indian-
apolis, who went there very often on the freight trains.
One morning he asked the ^^boss" for the job. The
^^boss," looking him over, saw only an eager small boy
asking an impossible question, and promptly told him
to ^^go back and sit down." It occurred to him then
that his appearance was against him for the job ; no one
seemed to believe that he was big enough to do danger-
ous work. So he started to demonstrate that he was.
He became one of the champion amateur bicycle riders
of Indiana.

A bicycle in those days was far from being safe sport.
They were that old-fashioned kind, with one big wheel
and a very small one on a rod, like an iron tail, behind.
The saddle was so high above the ground that it was all
a small boy could do to reach up to the handle bars and
hop into the saddle from a little step behind. Once in

304 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

the saddle, it was like being on a big horse, high up from
the ground. Finding that he had acquired some local
fame as a bicycle expert, his practical mind set to work
to turn this talent to account. The way he went about
this determination showed that he had a keen compre-
hension of sporting character.

It was the custom, at that time, to include bicycle
races among the sport exhibitions at the County Fairs.
Substantial prizes were offered for the winners. Young
Kenesaw Mountain entered one or two races, satisfied
himself that he could win, and promptly surveyed the
situation of bicycle-racing as an occupation. He ob-
served that there was a great deal of wasteful competi-
tion. Many contestants entered the races who had no
other qualifications than misguided advice or unreason-
able hope. It was a pity to see the long list of starters,
if not sometimes discouraging to a boy who needed the
prize-money. He hit upon a plan to challenge the idle
vanity of over-confident contestants. He bought a num-
ber of valueless but impressive medals of all sorts and
kinds, which he pinned on his vest. The contestants
usually registered their names in the morning for the
races to be run off in the afternoon. Adorned with
these spectacular trophies, that looked as though they
had been conferred upon him for former prowess in
bicycle events, he would stroll about the County Fair
grounds where the expectant contestants could see him.
The impression he made was in his favor, for many of
them, believing that only a champion could have been so
decorated, withdrew their names, and his competition
was of course reduced. He never told any one what

JUDGE KENESAW M. LANDIS 305

these medals represented, and no one asked him. His
victory was one of silent reproach to the egotism of
others. He won so many prizes that he accumulated
what he heard men talk about as ^Vorking capital/'
and with this money he plunged into an independent
ventjijej^ that failed.

He was scarcely seventeen when he transformed a
local hall into a roller-skating rink. It took all the
capital he had won at the races. Just when he was
about ready to open up for business, a fickle streak
changed the public fancy; roller-skating went out of
fashion, and Kenesaw Mountain was once more broke.
' These incidents, which were merely his boyish way
of showing that he was in a hurry to be a man, were
replaced by the ambition to be independent in thought
and deed, unhampered by mere business details. He
re^solved thaFmoney was not the greatest incentive in
the^^orld to a young man who had ideas about how
the country ought to be run. He acted at once upon
tEis conclusion, and decided to be a lawyer.

He was no doubt influenced a great deal by his
father's old Conmiander, Judge Walter Q. Gresham,
who in the Landis home was the famil}^ idol of all that
was good and fine in manhood. In fact the only reason
that his father had moved his family from Millville,
Ohio, to Logansport, Ind., was to be near his old com-
rade of the Civil War.

The impression young Kenesaw Mountain made
among his college mates at the Cincinnati Law School
was entirely in keeping with the prevailing character-
istic of his career, a complete indifference to outward ap-

306 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

pearances, a defiance of all college traditions. He had
very little money, which may have been the reason he
dressed as if he had just come off the farm. He was
more or less ignored at first by the habitual college-
^y type. He was especially curious about the basic
justice and uses of college fraternities which he did not
join. To his independent, wholly American turn of
mind, there was an element of injustice in these so-
cieties. He intuitively resented organization power,
being by temperament and feeling pledged to the con-
stitutional expedient of this Republic, a rule by major-
ity vote. Without comment or criticism he deliber-
ately created a power by vote to counteract the power
of organization of the college fraternities, and soon
found himself winning by class elections a control of
the social life of the college, thereby depriving the fra-
ternities of that prerogative. He always opposed pri-
^_ vate monopoly by secret organization ; he always ab-
horred class differences. It was a trait with which he
V-

was born that has perhaps been the basis of his distin-
guished character. Once he had decided to be a lawyer,
he put into practice the ideals with which he was subse-
quently to reduce the organization power of one of the
giant trusts of his own country. ;

After a term at the ^NTorth Western University, he
secured a diploma and opened a small, obscure office in
Chicago. After some months of quiet and uneventful
inertia (a period which many young lawyer-S endure
^uncomplainingly), a stranger in Chicago stumbled into
his ofiice Vvdth a minor case. Being the first chance
young Landis had to demonstrate the latent ambitions

JUDGE KENESAW M. LANDIS 307

of his profession he insisted on taking the case into
court, instead of settling it ont of court, as another
lawyer would, and attracted attention by his arguments
and general conduct. During a succeeding period of
inactivity, his father's old friend Judge Gresham, a
Federal Judge of Illinois, was appointed Secretary of
State in Cleveland's Cabinet, and invited the young
law^'er to go to Yv^ashington, with him, as his private
secretary.

Washington, to young Landis, deep-rooted in the sub-
soil of individual liberty, was in his own humorous,
whimsical fashion a place of infinite rebuke. It was
an experience which adjusted any restlessness he might
have had before, as to the advantages of a political
career. The doctrines of the United States Govern-
ment were so intrinsically planted in his being, that he
regarded politics in the light of emergency rather than
in the light of a permanent opportunity.

He found ample field in Washington for the play of
sly humor which lurks always in men of big simplicity
of character. For instance, he saw that the clerical
staff of the Government, especially the array of secre-
taries, big and little, affected in their manners and
clothes a forced dignity that tickled his fancy. His
own position among them, as private secretary to an
important Cabinet member, compelled a degree of awe
towards him that he pretended to exact. His own
clothes were always shabby, loose, formless accouter-
ments that gave him an easy air of slovenly protest to
dress, which disturbed the routine of careful attention
to sartorial details. Mr. Gresham himself leaned to-

308 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

ward this outward democracy in clothes and in man-
ner, and usually kept his hat on at his desk in the State
Department. Though not openly contemptuous, young
Landis affected a solemn dictatorial countenance, with a
serious, deep voice. He became a sublimated terror to
the clerical family in Washington. He turned every-
thing to some humorous opportunity in his own daring,
amusing way. One of his pet victims was Mr. Thurber,
Mr. Cleveland's private secretary, a rather timid, ner-
vous, highly conscientious official, with an over-anxious
attitude in his work. To Thurber's office young Landis
would go, when he felt especially mischievous, and sol-
emnly lecture him upon the evils of overwork, implor-
ing him to work less, to conserve his health. Then he
would s-tride out, leaving his victim more anxious than
ever. The sly mischief with which Judge Landis so
often punctured the weak points in an argument in
his court was inherently a characteristic faculty of his
nature all his life. He declined an offer by Mr. Cleve-
land of an appointment as Minister to Venezuela. At
the death of Mr. Gresham he left Washington and all
its political glitter behind him and returned to Chi-
cago to practice law. In Washington, however, he met
Miss Winifred Reed,, whom he married after he left
there.

~ It was President Roosevelt who appointed him, in
1908, Federal Judge in Illinois. His personal atti-
tude towards this appointment has never been that of
an officeholder but that of a servant of the people.

This was especially obvious when, after seventeen
years' service as a Federal Judge, he resigned in Febru-

JUDGE KENESAW M. LANDIS 309

ary, 1922, to devote his time entirely to the dictator-
ship of America's greatest sport — baseball.
>-_ He did not announce his resignation publicly, in ad-
vance. After his usual day in court, he merely walked
into his chambers and superintended the removal of
his effects. It vras a disordered room, filled with an
accumulation not merely of personal trophies of the in-
tervening years, but of personal expressions of regard
and respect from old friends and admirers, which filled
the office. He was particularly solicitous about two
busts, one of Gresham and one of Lincoln, that had been
conspicuous in his chambers. Also the propeller of an
aeroplane his son Reed had flown in during the war,
some portraits of famous men, and an old family clock
from the farm-homestead in Indiana were affectionately
guarded. His friends were of all classes, high and low,
and they stood around in the dumb anxiety of farewell
greetings, that they could not put into words. Tears
were plainly annoying the Judge himself, who kept
brushing them off, with the back of his hand. The old
bailiff came out of a sick bed, ill with pneumonia, in a
raging snow storm, to say good-bye, and the Judge,
^bundling him up in his own muffler, sent him home at
once. He took his last lunch as a Federal Judge at the
same modest little lunch counter at which he had always
taken it, for so many years, — and passed on to the new
jurisdiction of American baseball.

Among leaders of character Judge Landis is con-
spicuous for the democratic ideals of the rights of the
people, for the people. It was because of his incorrupt-
ible spirit of fair play, and strict honesty in ^j^^ipnS;

310 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

because of unique direct vision of justice and honesty
in human entanglements as well as legal, that he was
asked to retrieve the reputation and honor of American
sportsmanship which had gone temporarily astray in
the baseball clubs. He had made a deep impression
upon his countrymen long before, when he imposed the
immense fine of $29,400,000 on the Standard Oil Cor-
poration to establish the principle that the United
States Government demanded allegiance in business,
and registered again the principles of Washington, that
equal rights must be maintained.

BENJAMIN BURR LINDSEY

(1869 )

A JUDGE WHO BELIEVES ALL
BOYS ARE GOOD

Courtesy of Mr. Frederick Hill Meserve

BENJAMIN BURR LINDSEY

THJ NEW T9RC
PUBLIC LIBRARY

'fLDFV c ■ V

^n«:

BENJAMIN BUER LINDSEY

(1869 )

A JUDGE WHO BELIEVES ALL
BOYS ARE GOOD

BECAUSE he knew that a boy who "snitched" was
not a real juvenile criminal, Ben Lindsey be-
came known to boyhood when he was only thirty-
two as "the Judge who'll give a square deal."

He knew that "snitching" was a mistake, that steal-
ing was, too, and that the "kids" who belonged to gangs
often made mistakes that they didn't realize at the
time. Judge Lindsey created a new way of treating
bad boys and girls who were brought before him. In
his Juvenile Court in Denver, Colorado, he discovered
that most "kids" needed a little friendly advice. It
was all very well to punish a "kid," but what happened
after he was punished? The "kid" became sullen, re-
bellious, or was kept from being "bad" through fear.
Judge Lindsey argued with the boy this way :

"E'o good bein' afraid; let's cut out all ^snitching'
and tell the truth, and then we'll see what's the best
thing to do."

When Ben Lindsey was brought by his parents to
the West, the Civil War was just over. They had been

obliged to give up their home in Tennessee, and like a

313

314 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

great many other men and women of the South who had
lost all they had, they had to go to work. His father
died soon after they came North and he and his mother
set out to support themselves and the rest of the family,
^en got a job as a messenger boy. He thought he was
pretty lucky to get it, and of course, in a way, he was
lucky, because he earned some money. But it was more
important in another way, for during that time in his
first job, the future Judge learned all about the bad
boy. Messenger boys have to be bright enough to see
everything that's going on around them, and Ben was
educated in the street school, where promotion often
led to jail, and jail led to a completely hardened crim-
inal when the first sentence was done.

He made a lot of mistakes when he was a boy him-
self, which he acknowledges. They were the kind of
mistakes that the law forbids, mistakes that give the
"cop" the right to seize the '^kid" and bring him before
the Judge.

As a boy, Ben was never "swiped," but he came so
precious near it that he understands perfectly how a
"kid" feels when he is brought into a courtroom for
the first time, and knows that he is going to be put in
prison. It is too late then to wish you hadn't made
the mistake. The "kid" does one of two things — he
either looks the Judge squarely in the eye when he hears
himself sentenced to the reformatory school ; or he cries,
and trembles, and can hardly stand up on his feet from
sheer terror. If a lie will help, the "kid" will lie to the
Judge, and that's one thing Juvenile Court won't
stand for.

BENJAMIN BURR LINDSEY 315

There are a great many other things it won't allow
either, which proves that it was a lucky thing for the
"kids" and their parents that Judge Lindsey had once
been a messenger boy, and found out all about real
boys, good and bad. He had managed to study up
enough law in night school to pass his law examinations,
and then he got into politics in a small way. Being a
politician helped him a little at first, because it secured
for him a temporary job as a Judge, filling out the unex-
pired time of another man. He didn't want to be a
Judge. What he really wanted to be was District
Attorney, but he failed and took what he could get
from the political crowd he belonged to. He did his
work on the bench acceptably, doing only just what the
law told him to do, and paying little or no attention
to the inward character of the cases that came before
him. One day something sensational happened in the
courtroom.

He had just sentenced a young man for petit lar-
ceny, and wearily had called the "next case." Sud-
denly the courtroom was echoing with the wild, ago-
nized shriek of a woman. Savagely, incoherently, piti-
fully she staggered to the Judge and accused him of in-
justice, of being an "unmerciful Judge," and she told
him that her boy was a good boy, that he had just made
a mistake. Something deep in the conscience of the
Judge reached the heart of the man, and he realized
that he had been passing sentence as if it were merely
a routine job to send young men to jail. This ago-
nized protest of a mother against the injustice of a law
that had not taken into account the mother's love for a

316 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

child, or the child's love for the mother, awakened in
the young man acting as Judge a sense of duty.

"It was an awful cry, a terrible sight, and I was
stunned," said Judge Lindsey, remembering the inci-
dent, "I looked at the boy prisoner again, but with new
eyes now. I called him back, and I called the old
woman before me. Comforting and quieting her, I
talked with the two together as mother and son, and
found the boy had a home. I had been about to send
that boy into the association of criminals in a prison,
because the law compelled me to, and he had a home and
a mother to teach him better."

The Judge suspended sentence, he went to the boy's
home, and he became a sort of guardian and helped the
mother to bring that boy up successfully. That was
the turning-point in the career of that very young
Judge; he became a big brother to the small boys who
were not bad, but who made mistakes.

There was no difference, the Judge thought, between
"swiping" something that belonged to some one else, and
stealing it, but something in the recollection of his own
boyhood told him that boys didn't really want to "swipe"
or "snitch." Most boys had a keen, unerring sense of
the square deal and hated underhand methods. The
boy who "swiped something" was the first "probation
case" which led to the wonderful record of the cele-
brated Juvenile Court in Denver, Colorado. It was
more than that, it was the discovery that Ben Lindsey
knew how to talk to "kids," how to get the truth out
of them, how to talk the first lie of their young lives out
of their souls.

BENJAMIN BUER LINDSEY 317

v

All the good and surprising things that Judge Lind-
sey has done in the course of his development of crime
prevention by stopping its growth in a juvenile state,
depended entirely upon the sympathetic skill of Ben
Lindsey himself. The mere change of laws which he
brought about to help him in his idea of a Juvenile
Court will not guarantee that success in the future.
Judge Lindsey has made of his idea something for him-
self.

His love of children, the ease with which he can pene-
trate the character of a boy brought into his court, is
an amazing genius of his own. Whether a boy scowls
at him, smiles at him, cries or trembles, he can place that
boy's character in his own mind at once. And he loves
them all. That is the pervading spirit of Judge Lind-
sey's court-life.

The more frightened the boy appears to be, the more
quickly the Judge gets right down off the bench and sits
down on a camp stool as an equal with him. He has
found it necessary in obstinate cases, where the child is
so completely entangled in the terror of his position,
for the Judge to put on his hat and take a walk with
the ^'kid" so that they can talk it over in the open air,
away from the terrible courtroom that he dreads so
much. Then, if advisable, the Judge may take the
prisoner home to dinner with him, just to make him
feel that the Judge is his friend. His object is to re-
store in the "kid" a sense of honor, to make him feel
that he's just as good as the Judge, if he only "Keeps
straight."

There was no such thing in criminal courts before.

318 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

The law came first in the Judge's decision, and the
human element scarcely entered into the matter at all.

A young fellow, only twenty, who was under sen-
tence for murder was approached by Judge Lindsey for
an explanation of how he could have committed any-
thing so atrocious. The explanation showed the boy's
impression of a Criminal Court.

^'It was this way," explained the boy, telling of his
first arrest when he was twelve years old. ^'The guy on
the high bench with the whiskers says, '^What's the boy
done, officer?" And the cop says, says he, ^He's a
bad kid, your honor, and broke into a store and stole
a razor!' and the guy on the high bench says, ^Ten
dollars or ten days' — time, three minutes ; one round
of a prize fight."

In Judge Lindsey's court the "kids" see no ^^guy on
a high bench." Instead, a rather small, clean-cut
gentleman walks up to one of the boys. It's the Judge.
V ^What's the matter, my boy?" he says, putting his
hand on his shoulder. "You've been making a
mistake ? Well, lots of fellers make mistakes. That's
nothing. I've made mistakes myself, worse'n yours, I
guess. What was it, officer ?"

"Stealing isn't right, my boy, now is it ?" He turns
to the other boys waiting to be brought before him
and pleads with them, "Is it, fellers? Is stealing
right? You know as well as I do it's weak to swipe
things."

Nothing hurts a boy as much as to tell him he's
weak. Then he goes on driving into the conscience,
down into the very heart of the "kid."

BENJAMIN BURR LINDSEY 319

"I know how it is," he says, ^^it's a temptation. It's a
chance to get something easy ; something you want ; or
something you can sell to get something you want.
Wanted to go to the show, maybe. Well, it takes a
pretty strong feller to down the desire to take a chance
and see the show. But it's wrong to swipe things,
'tain't fair, 'tain't brave, it's just mean and it hurts the
feller that steals. Makes him steal again, and by and
by he's caught and sent up — a thief. Now you ain't
a thief, and you don't want to be. Do you ? But you
were too weak to resist temptation so you were caught.
Ought to cut it out. Not because you were caught.
That isn't the reason a feller oughtn't to steal. It's be-
cause it's mean and sneaky, and no fellow wants to be
mean and sneaky. He wants to be on the square.
What are you crying for ? Afraid of being punished ?
Pshaw, a feller ought to stand up and take his medi-
cine; but w^e don't punish boys. We just try to help
'em get strong and be square. Even when we send
fellers to the Golden Institute, it isn't for punishment ;
it's only to help a kid that's weak get strong enough to
control himself. So we aren't going to punish you.
Eirst off, a kid ought to be strong enough and suffi-
ciently on the square to tell the truth about himself.
Ought to tell not only about this time, when you're
caught, but all the other times too. You wait and after
court we'll go back in chambers and we'll have it out,
just us two."

The Judge had been a boy who must have made some
mistakes himself when he was young. He knew the
language of boyhood delinquency, and he could talk to

320 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTEE

them in it. He took the terror out of the courtroom,
the children themselves finding that the Judge was
really their friend. "The Judge gives a fellow a
show," as they expressed it among themselves. The
Judge did a great deal more than that, he actually
proved that boys and girls have a wisdom that sur-
passes the law. They may not reason so well but they
have an instinct of honor that grows weak only as they
grow up.

The Juvenile Court became a National point of in-
terest, and Ben Lindsey, the Judge, found himself
talked about as a "reformer." He didn't ask for that
distinction, but he did love his work.

"l^ever let a child get away with a lie in his soul,"
says Judge Lindsey. Admitting that children are won-
derful liars, the Judge can always tell when they are
lying to him.

"You can't fool the Judge," the boys say. Once a
boy tried to. He "lied straight" and since the Judge
will not "help" a boy who won't tell the truth he told
the officer to take him to jail. On the way the boy
changed his mind, and came back.

"You're right. Judge," he said, "and you're game.
I lied to you, I lied like a horse thief, and I couldn't
fool you a little bit. You've beat me, Judge, and I'll
tell the truth."

The truth as the Judge sees it, though, is the truth
as a boy understands it. ISTo boy ever "snitches" on a
friend, even though he could do so truthfully. He
reasons with the boy. He agrees with him that it is
all wrong to "snitch" on other fellows, but it is all right

BENJAMIN BURR LINDSEY 321

to "snitch." on yourself. He drove out fear, and the
old ideas of punishment in this way, substituting confi-
dence and a boy's sense of honor. He was experi-
menting at first with a new kind of law, and one
of the earliest cases before him demonstrated that
if you trust a boy he will return the trust. This in-
volved charges against seven boys caught by a police-
man playing rowdy tricks on street cars, throwing
stones, annoying passengers and conductors. The Judge
got them together in his chambers and explained to
them that while he saw it was fun for them, it wasn't
exactly fun for the other people; it made life hard
for them. This was something the boys hadn't thought
about; they only looked upon this as "fair game,"
fellers who "would give you a chase if you held them
up," and what's more fun than to be chased^ and
escape ?

" 'Tain't fair, is it^^ fellers ?" asked the Judge.

"No, sir."

"Well, what do you say to cuttin' it out?" They
agreed as for themselves, but there was the gang, — the
rest of them to deal with, and the Judge knew all
about that side of boy life.

"Will you fellers bring in the rest of the gang to-
morrow?" asked the Judge.

"Sure," they would. But the "gang" didn't come,
though the original seven showed up.

"Well, what are you going to do ?" asked the Judge,
putting the problem of getting the gang into court to
them.

"A warrant," said the Judge. "I'll write you out a

322 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

warrant and you serve it on the gang. But what shall
I write ?'^

"You begin it," said one Kid, "begin by saying, —
^ISTo kid has "snitched," but if you'll come the Judge'll
give you a square deal.' " The next day the whole
gang, fifty-two kids, came into court. The Judge
placed them on their honor.

"I'm going to let you police your neighborhood your-
selves," he began, "I've told the trolley company that I
will be responsible for there being no more trouble with
you. ^N'ow the company said I'd be foolish, that you
kids would go back on me. I said you wouldn't, and I
still say so. You see, I'm depending on you fellows,
and I don't think you'll throw me down. What do you
say?"

"We'll stay with yer, Jedge," they shouted, and they
did. They organized a Kids' Citizens' League, and
played square with the Judge.

Instead of "breaking up" the gang, the old system of
police regulation, the Judge turned them to public use.
He gave those kids a chance to show character. His
success in putting boys on their honor has been
phenomenal. For instance, there was a boy called
"Major." He never had any home, so he had
what the boys call the "move-on fever." He would
roam all over the country. The Judge tried many
ways to cure him of it, but failed, until one day he called
on the Judge to say good-bye before starting out on an-
other adventure. The Judge urged him to resist the
temptation; he confessed he was too weak. Finally
the "Major" agreed that perhaps he'd better go to the

BENJAMIN BURE LINDSEY 323

Golden Institute, because it might help to cure him.
The Judge made out his commitment papers, gave them
to him, gave him money to pay his carfare, and told
him to report to the Superintendent of the Institute.
He did so. That was the Judge's way of showing the
boys that it was not enforced punishment, it was for
their good; and they could go there or not, once they
started.

The success which Judge Lindsey has had in win-
ning the confidence of boys is remarkable. They will
tell him everything, even the bad things they do, and the
failures they encounter in doing them. They ^^snitch''
upon themselves, and finally look upon the reformatory
as a benefit. When a ^'kid'' tells the Judge what an
easy chance he saw to steal and not get caught, the
Judge says to him, '^Gee, that was a good chance, wasn't
it, that's certain. But, 'tain't square, kid."

Judge Lindsey believes that character in all boys
is really good if you watch for their mistakes.

During the twenty odd years of his service in the
Juvenile Court of Colorado, Judge Lindsey established
a unique reputation that is world-wide. Whenever
child delinquency is a problem of social welfare, the
methods adopted by Judge Lindsey are discussed. No
other court has ever achieved the prominence in its
decisions of juvenile cases that the Juvenile Court of
Colorado has received. No other Judge has ever un-
derstood the psychology of the child-mind so well as
Judge Lindsey. His application of the statute laws
has been conspicuous because he has applied them with
a special genius for their uses and abuses. Judge

324 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

Lindsey's keen sense of humor, which is one of the
natural elements in children, has been helpful in mak-
ing parents and teachers realize that juvenile crime
more often springs from a source of playful mischief
in children, than from actual criminal instinct. He
has studied the welfare of boys and girls from a prac-
tical observation with an expert sympathy that has
made him a celebrated authority on this subject, the
world over.

CALVIN COOLIDGE

(1872 )

THE MAN WHO STOOD FOE LAW
AND ORDEE

Copyright by Harris & Ewing

CALVIN COOLIDGE

i'HS NEW YCRIC

•■'•J3LIC LIBPAl^Y

CALVIN COOLIDGE

(1872 )

THE MAN WHO STOOD FOR LAW
AND ORDER

FORTY years ago, high up among the Yermont
hills in a little town named Plymouth, a ten-
year-old boy lived, worked, and studied as thou-
sands of American boys have done; and probably
dreamed, as all boys do, of his future career. This boy
was Calvin Coolidge. His father. Col. John C. Cool-
idge, ran a little country store at Plymouth and also
owned a typical New England hill farm. Calvin was a
rather slightly built, quiet, studious boy, in no way ab-
normal, though possibly a little more serious-minded
than the average youngster of his age and circum-
stances. Yet boys born and brought up in such remote
towns as Plymouth, Vermont, easily develop such char-
acteristics as silence and reflectiveness. There is a so-
lemnity about the lofty hills and rugged landscape of
northern New England which imprints itself often upon
those nurtured in this environment. Plymouth rests
quiet and beautiful in a little hollow surrounded by
hills densely green and cool in the summer, a gorgeous
pageantry of nature in the autumn, and in the winter
bleak but for the redeeming promise of the evergreens

327

328 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

whicli make this portion of New England always de-
lightful and always loved by those of New England
blood.

Calvin Coolidge, on November 2, 1920, was elected
Vice-President of the United States.

What was there in the boy who trudged the roads
about Plymouth on his way to the little one-room dis-
trict school^ helped his father in the local store, and
did the ordinary chores of the farm boy, which pointed
him towards the Vice-Presidency of his country?
What was it that took place between those days of his
boyhood and the present to develop the boy's qualities
into the man's successes ?

The boy Coolidge was a typical New England Ameri-
ican boy. His father was a typical Vermont farmer.
He was not without those comforts which are necessary
for a wholesome life. He had no desire for those lux-
uries which are superfluous. John C. Coolidge, Cal-
vin's father, was an upstanding American who worked
hard and achieved a normal success. He had, and still
has, a good farm which has always been wisely and
profitably cultivated. The Plymouth store was like
countless similar stores, scattered through similar New
England to^vns. In the summer time Calvin went
barefooted as did and still do American youngsters who
live in the country and are free from the restrictions
imposed by city life. In brief, Calvin Coolidge led an
entirely normal and typical life as a boy on a Vermont
farm. He had presumably a better mental equipment
than the average boy, but his success rests upon two
things — first : He was by nature, probably by in-

CALVIN COOLIDGE 329

heritance, thouglitfiil ; second : He had an invincible
determination to make the utmost of every opportunity
for improvement.

To understand the basis of his career, it is well
to know a little concerning his ancestry, not because it
was imusual, for it was not; but because that ancestry
furnished him a foundation upon which to build, just as
the ancestry of thousands of boys furnishes them a foun-
dation which, if they understand it and utilize it, is a
mighty incentive and aid to their progress.

The Coolidge family came to America in 1630 and
settled in what is now W.atertown, Mass. They were
farmers by inclination and necessity, for in those far-off
years tilling the ground was essential to livelihood for
most settlers in this new country. They were sturdy,
clean, respected people. Calvin Coolidge's great-gre'at-
grandfather left Lancaster, Ifass., where the family
then lived, and with his family struck out into what was
almost a wilderness in Vermont. There he. established
himself and family on the old military road to
Ticonderoga, and later at the place which is now the
little village of Plymouth, but which was called by the
settlers, as it is still called by most of those who live
there, the Notch. The life of those early settlers was
rigorous, wholesome, and happy. They never con-
sidered whether they were wealthy or otherwise. They
found in the New England soil opportunities for suf-
ficient prosperity, and this they obtained. New Eng-
land farming in the hill towns is hard work. The soil
is rich but requires persistent labor to make it produc-
tive. It develops strong men.

330 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

John C. Coolidge, the Vice-President's father, is a
hardy, strong-featured, erect, clear-eyed American, rep-
resentative of one of the best types of our nation. He
looks many years younger than he is to-day and he
has the comfort of a life well spent and the satisfaction
which comes from service of value to his State and 'Nsi-
tion. He has served his State government and is
known among Vermont leaders as a man of accurate
judgment, high character and native wisdom. He was
a good father for a boy in whose mind grew up the de-
sire and determinatio.a to be of public usefulness.

Calvin Coolidge, after the years spent in the district
school and on the farm in Plymouth, went from there
to Ludlow, Vt., twelve miles away, where he attended
Black River Academy. This school was like many
similar schools which one may find in hundreds of
American towns. It had every possible facility for
the development of character. Por the boy who wanted
seriously to study and to develop himself it provided
opportunity as all such schools do provide. Young
Calvin Coolidge continued at Black River Academy a
thoughtful boy. He studied well, lived frugally, and
he had time for the natural fun of any healthy Ameri-
can boy. Rather slight of build, wiry and quiet, he
was not boisterous and was not fitted or inclined for
athletic sport. He had the usual boy's love of fun *and
he took the usual boy's share of pranks and hard knocks.
All the time he was strengthening his own character
and was acquiring education. What he learned he re-
membered ; and this quality of retentiveness, partly in-
born and partly acquired by his own determination to

CALVIN COOLIDGE 331

succeed, has always been characteristic of him and is
one of the factors in his success in public life.

While he attended school at Ludlow, he retained, of
course, close contact with his home a dozen miles up
the hills. Plymouth has, perhaps, half a dozen houses
grouped near a cross-road, a union church, one store,
a little schoolhouse, and a cheese factory. About it
rise the ISTew England hills. The influence of heroic
nature and mighty spaces stayed with the Coolidge boy
thus throughout the formative period of his life.

Calvin Coolidge's birthday was July 4, 1872. His
mother, Victoria J. (Moor) Coolidge, died when he was
twelve years old ; five years later he lost his only sister.
These were severe blows to a sensitive boy. He was for-
tunate, however, in the fact that within seven years he
had a mother who was devoted to him and loved him
w^ith almost the love a mother has for her own son. This
affection between step-mother and step-son lasted
throughout her life, which ended recently.

From Black River Academy Calvin Coolidge later
went to the Academy of St. Johnsbury. His course
there was not dissimilar to that in Ludlow, except that
it was his first long step away from home at Plymouth.
Prom St. Johnsbury he went to Amherst College in Mas-
sachusetts. It is not of record that he told anybody
what direction his ambition took. His efforts had been
applied to building stronger and higher the foundation
upon which he was to rest his future. His career at
Amherst College followed lines much like those at school,
although here he was even further removed from home
and more under the necessity of self-discipline and self-

332 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

dependence. His circumstances were those of thou-
sands of other young men who seek education in Amer-
ican schools and colleges.

Here, as at school, he had not the physique nor had
he the time for athletic sports. He was not frail, but
he was rather too slight of build for baseball, football
or other games. His health was good, and as he had
worked hard out-doors on his father's farm he now
worked hard over his studies. He found time for diver-
sion and he made friends, although his habit of reticence
remained with him. He lived inexpensively at college
because it was the nature of his stock to be thrifty and
because, while there was enough to carry him through
college, there was not enough to waste. He was not at
first conspicuous in college nor did he make any bids
for wide .personal popularity. All the boys knew him
and respected him. Many had a strong friendship for
him and those who knew him best rated him highest.
He studied sincerely and what he learned he remem-
bered. In his Senior year, in competition with all
American colleges, he won the first prize for the best
essay on the ^Trinciples Underlying the American
Revolution.'' It is characteristic of him that when he
received the gold medal which represented this achieve-
ment he put it away in the drawer of his desk in the
law office in which he then was reading law after gradu-
ation, and told nobody about it. What interested him
was the work and achievement of his thesis. For the
visible decoration of winning he had no great regard.
The incident is illuminating and suggestive. Through-
out his career as a boy, a youth, and a man he has loved

CALVIN COOLIDGE 333

work for tlie sake of work and lie has desired success
as a means for further achievement. With decorations,
show, and display he has little concern.

Bj this time he had determined upon the profession
of law. He was graduated from Amherst with the
A. B. degree and was the Grove Orator at the Com-
mencement exercises, a place assigned to wit and humor.
He stepped now from the formative process of educa-
tion into the next stage of development. He entered the
office of Judge Hammond of IsTorthampton, a leading
lawyer, and there he entered upon the study of law. He
applied himself industriously and he showed that quick
keenness of perception which has been one of his char-
acteristics in his public career. The law was his ob-
vious field. He understood it and loved it. Here was
developed, also, another of those qualities which later
were to mark him as an exceptional man. Men enter
professions with varying degrees of earnestness and
with varying measures of regard for the profession they
choose. He started upon the field of law with a com-
plete sincerity and with a high respect for that profes-
sion. ]^o man in public life has held public office in
greater respect or has occupied it with a more complete
dignity than llr. Coolidge. This attitude he formed
or developed in his first year of reading law in Judge
Hammond's office. It was another stone in the foun-
dation he was building for his future career.

He was an apt pupil. His progress was so rapid
that after twenty months in Judge Hammond's office he
passed the bar examinations and was admitted to prac-
tice.

334 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

At this point we find another foundation stone laid.
He did not leave the small city of ^N'orthampton and
seek large financial rewards or quick opportunity in a
big city. He opened his law ofiice in the same city in
which he had acquired his law education. He has gone
far in public life since then. His name is familiar in
every State of the Union. He' has reached the heights.
His law office is where it was first established — in
ITorthampton. In that city, too, is his home. When
he was thirty-three he married Miss Grace A. Goodhue
of Burlington, Vt. They established their home in one
half of a two-family house on Massasoit Street, North-
ampton. That is their home to-day. It is a comfort-
able house, unpretentious but attractive. There are two
boys now, John and Calvin Jr. These two facts — that
he has retained his original law office in I^orthampton
and that he and his family have been content to live in
the same comfortable and sufficient home that was theirs
before eminence came to him — attest the stability of
his character and the precision of his judgment of life's
associations. It shows his realization of the fact that
opportunity is less a matter of location than of deter-
mination and work.

He early entered active political life, not as a seeker
of reward, but because through these channels he be-
lieved he could best apply his abilities and in these ways
he could best satisfy his ambition to serve his town and
his city and State. He became a member of the IsTorth-
ampton City Council in 1899. The next year he was
made City Solicitor and filled that office two years.
Later he served as County Clerk of Hampshire County

CALVIN COOLIDGE 335

under appointment by the State Supreme Judicial
Court. In 1907 and 1908 he represented Northampton
as Representative in the Massachusetts Legislature.
In 1910 and 1911 he was Mayor of Northampton.
The next year his district sent him to the Legislature
as its Senator. He remained in the Senate four years,
the last two of which he was President of that body.
His address to the Senate upon taking the office of its
President is one of the masterpieces of American
political literature. In that speech he set forth what
has often been called his motto :

"Do the day's work.''

L^'pon his reelection to the Presidency of the Senate the
following year he made a second speech of acceptance
which attracted attention from the fact that it contained
precisely forty-two words. It ended with these two : —
"Be brief." In 1916 he was Lieutenant-Governor of
Massachusetts; he was reelected in 1917 and 1918.
These were war years and he was notably effective in
preparing and executing plans for the part played by
Massachusetts in the World War. In the fall of 1918
he was elected Governor of the Commonwealth by a
plurality of about 17,000 votes. In 1919 he was re-
elected Governor by a plurality of more than 125,000
votes. This was one of the largest votes given a Mas-
sachusetts Governor.

Mr. Coolidge's service to his State in both branches of
the Legislature, as Lieutenant-Governor and as Gover-
nor, further emphasized the stability of his character
and the precision of his judgment. Accepting each of

336 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

these offices as a trust, he sought so to perform the duties
connected with them that the State should be. permar
nentlj better equipped through his efforts and because of
his occupancy of office. As Governor he was particu-
larly effective in reorganizing the State departments.
It is noteworthy that such re-organization was carried
through with a minimum of friction and with results
which have raised the standard of public service. There
was no raid on the personnel of the State government.
There were no sensational methods employed. He ap-
plied sound principles and he exercised good judgment.
The result of this process or re-organization was perma-
nently to strengthen the administration of public affairs
in Massachusetts, so that when he went out of State
office he left his commonwealth stronger and more effi-
cient through his having served it. In his choice of men
for appointive positions, he again showed that under-
standing of the needs of each case, which constituted
some portion of his success in public life. He selected
able men and encouraged them to use their authority
without fear of obstruction or interfere ace. Thus his
service to his State through a succession of elective
offices was marked by permanent construction and by a
continuous manifestation of fair-mindedness. He
built up* for himself in the minds of the people of Mas-
sachusetts a feeling of confidence.

Before his reelection in 1919, Calvin Coolidge was
known and respected by the people of his State. Be-
yond Massachusetts he had only that fame which nat-
urally attaches to a Governor of that State. In Sep-
tember, 1919, when the campaign for his reelection was

CALVIN COOLIDGE 337

going on, there occurred in Boston one of the crises of
American history. The police of the city claimed and
asserted the right to affiliate themselves as an organiza-
tion with the American Federation of Labor. This as-
sertion was opposed and denied by Edwin U. Curtis,
the Police Commissioner of the city. Governor Cool-
idge publicly declared he would support the Commis-
sioner. Despite every proper effort to prevent such a
catastrophe, the majority of the Boston police left their
posts and the city was. given over- to disorder, anarchy
and terror. The situation developed with appalling
rapidity. It was of far more than local consequence.
Boston suddenly presented an acute test of the authority
of law and the invincibility of government. It was
suddenly discovered by how thin a thread safety for the
public held. Had failure of law and order been effec-
tively demonstrated in Boston, there would unquestion-
ably have followed in many parts of the country sim-
ilar and possibly far worse disasters. The whole
structure of American law-abiding democracy was sud-
denly shocked and imperiled. Here was a ISTational
problem suddenly con'centrated in the capital city of
Massachusetts. Local authorities did what they could,
but it w^as necessary that a more effective force should
be applied immediately to prevent a tragedy.

It was this situation which Governor Coolidge seized
with a firm hand. His promptness of decision, the
clarity of his presentation of the issue, the uncompro-
mising insistence upon the authority of law, drew the
attention of the Nation and won its immediate approval.
To the assertion made in behalf of the striking police

338 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER

that they had a right to a dual allegiance and that they
had a right to leave their posts in the puhlic service,
Governor Coolidge uttered the phrase which swept from
one end of the country to the other and which summed
up in one of the masterpieces of condensation, an unas-
sailable truth that ^'There is no right to strike against
the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time."
There was the issue made clear.

This being in the midst of his campaign for reelec-
tion, some of his associates, solicitous for his political
welfare, urged him to compromise. He had restored
order. State troops were in command of the situation
and a new police force was being recruited. He was
urged to consent to or approve of the restoration of the
police who had left their posts. He would not compro-
mise. It was represented to him that his attitude might
array organized labor against him and defeat him for
reelection. His reply to one man who put the case
before him in that light was characteristic. It was
this: "It does not matter whether I am reelected
Governor or not."

Within a few weeks he was, in fact, reelected by an
avalanche of votes which attested the approval of his
course. Labor did not oppose him, and in fact mem-
bers of labor organizations overwhelmingly voted for
him.

Such was the incident which brought Calvin Coolidge
into l^ational prominence. For a few days, as Gover-
nor of Massachusetts he had stood between law-abiding
American democracy and the threat of anarchy and po-
litical chaos. He had shown a capacity for judgment,

CALVIN COOLIDGE 339

decision, action, and firmness which appealed to the
mind of America.

At the Eepublican ^National Convention in Chicago,
in June, 1920, he was nominated for Vice-President.
He had not sought the office. He had been urged by
many of his friends to be a candidate for nomination
for the Presidency. In such a program he refused to
have any part. Wlien the pressure became insistent,
he issued a public statement in which he said he was not
a candidate. He would not deviate from that state-
ment. At the Chicago convention his name was among
those for whom ballots were cast for the Presidential
nomination. When he was nominated for Vice-Presi-
dent it was immediately apparent that he would be
the convention's choice, and he was, in fact, nominated
by an overwhelming majority on the first ballot.

Thus the American boy, brought up under the simple,
wholesome, invigorating, clean environment of a little
town in the Vermont hills, became Vice-President of the
United States. His foundation was character. His
pathway was hard work directed not towards any spe-
cific goal of office, but based consistently and unremit-
tingly upon the motto which best characterizes his ca-
reer : ^^Do the day's work." There is nothing magical
in what he has done. He had an average American
start. He had at the beginning an average American
equipment. He was neither rich nor poor. He liked
work and he worked hard. Once when his father was
asked what sort of a worker the boy Calvin was on the
farm, he replied:

"It always seemed to me that Calvin could get more

340 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER

sap out of a maple tree than any other boy around
here.''

Calvin Coolidge is in every way a representative
American. He has risen above the level of the aver-
age man by making the utmost use of every capacity
he had, by applying his best talents, and by keeping his
judgments cold and his love for humanity warm.

THE END

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF REFER-
ENCES CONSULTED

In the quest of facts in the preparation of this volume,
it has been necessary to consult many books and magazine
articles of the period. The author desires to give credit to
all published works from which data has been secured.
Some of the works consulted are out of print, and the
publishers out of existence, and the authors dead. In all
cases letters have been sent to every publisher notifying
them of the purpose and desire of the author to give full
credit. Acknowledgments have been received in most
cases. In the following list the author begs to give credit
to published works and their authors, although in most
cases other sources of information in the preparation of
the sketches have been resorted to, including the descend-
ants of the deceased subjects, and the living personages
themselves, in the interest of accuracy and authoritative-
ness. _The author holds no publisher or author or in-
dividual~2^iSTrtt^'"res^c>nsible for any of the facts or
statements in these sketches of great Americans. He has
presented from all sources of information such a com-
posite as seems to reflect the subject, his character and
the environment of his youth, his achievements, and his
impress upon the period in which he lived or lives.
Among otlier sources, the following books were consulted :

The Bobbs-Merrill Company

**OuR Common Country," by Frederick E. Schorte-
meier.

The Century Co.
*' William Lloyd Garrison, The Story of His Life
Told by His Children. ' '

341

342 REFERENCES CONSULTED

"Recollections of Grover Cleveland," by George

F. Parker.
''Grover Cleveland," by Richard Wilson Gilder.

Chappie Publishing Co., Ltd.

''Warren G. Harding, The Man," by Joseph Mitchell
Chappie.

T. Y. Crowell Company

"The Happy Life," by Charles W. Eliot.

Dodd, Mead & Company

"Charles Sumner," by Anna Laurens Dawes.

Doubleday, Pag6 & Company

"Recollections and Letters of General Lee," by

Captain Robert E. Lee, Jr.
"WooDROW Wilson," by Wm. Bayard Hale.
' ' John Burroughs, Boy and Man, ' ' by Clara Barrus.
"Up from Slavery," by Booker T. Washington.

E. P. Button & Company

"Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks," by Alexan-
der V. G. Allen.

Field's, Osgood & Co.

"The Life of Horace Greeley," by James Parton.

J. B. Ford & Co.

' ' Recollections of a Busy Life, ' ' by Horace Greeley.

Harper Brothers

"The War, The World — Wilson," by George Creel.
"Boys' Life of Theodore Roosevelt," by Herman
Hagedorn.

Houghton Mifflin Company

"Charles W. Eliot," by Dr. Eugene Kuehnemann.
"The Training for an Effective Life," by Charles
W. Eliot.

REFERENCES CONSULTED 343

Hubbard Bros.

"Cleveland and Hendricks," by William Dors-

heimer.
Little, Brown & Company

"Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale," by

Edward E. Hale, Jr.

McCIure's Magazine

' ' Judge Lindsey, A Just Judge, ' ' by Lincoln Steffins.
Moffat, Yard & Company

' ' Memories and Milestones, ' ' by John Jay Chapman.
J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Company

"Life by Sketches of W. J. Bryan," by Hon.
William Sulzer.

A. D. F. Randolph & Company

"DwiGHT Lyman Moody and Ira D. Sankey."
Fleming H. Revell Company

"The Life of Dwight L. Moody," by W. R. Moody.
Roberts Bros.

"Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner," by
Edward L. Pierce.

B. B. Russel

"Life and Public Service of Grover Cleveland,'*
by Frederick E. Goodrich.

Charles Scribner's Sons

"Robert E. Lee, "Man and Soldier," by Thomas

Nelson Page.
"Early Memories," by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.

The Sunday School Times Company

"My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns,"
by Ira D. Sankey.

The John C. Winston Co.

"Dwight L. Moody," by J. W. Chapman.

344 REFERENCES CONSULTED

R. H. Woodward Co.

"Life and Speeches of W. J. Bryan.'*
Julian Burroughs

"John Burroughs."
CoL Herman Dieck

"Life and Public Service of Grover Cleveland."
R. L. Metcalfe

"Life and Public Services of W. J. Bryan."

Selections from

The Page Company's

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LIST OF TITLES
QUEEN HILDEGARDE
HILDEGARDE 'S HOLIDAY
HILDEGARDE'S HOME
HILDEGARDE'S NEIGHBORS
HILDEGARDE'S HARVEST
THREE MARGARETS
MARGARET MONTFORT
PEGGY
RITA
FERNLEY HOUSE

THE MERRYWEATHERS
A— 6

THIS PAOE COMPANY'S

THE CAPTAIN JANUARY SERIES

By Lauha E. Richards

Each one volume, 12mo, cloth decorative, illus-
trated, per volum-e 90 cents

CAPTAIN JANUARY

A charming idyl of New England coast life, whose
success has been very remarkable.

SAME. Illustrated Holiday Edition . . $1.35

MELODY: The Story of a Chiij).

MARIE

A companion to " Melody " and '' Captain January.'*

ROSIN THE BEAU

A sequel to " Melody " and " Marie."

SNOW-WHITE ; Or, The House in the Wood.

JIM OF HELLAS; Or, Ik Durance Vii^, and a
companion story, Bethesda Pool.

NARCISSA

And a companion story, In Verona, being two delight-
ful short stories of New England life.

"SOME SAY"

And a companion story. Neighbors in Cyrus.

NAUTILUS

" ' Nautilus ' is by far the best product of the author's
powers, and is certain to achieve the %vide success it so
richly merits."

ISLA HERON

This interesting story is written in the author's usual
charming manner.

A— 6

BOOKS FOB TOUNO PEOPLE

DELIGHTFUL BOOKS FOR LITTLE
FOLKS

By Lauea E. Richards
THREE MINUTE STORIES

Cloth decorative, 12mo, with eight plates in full color
and many text illustrations . . . . $1.75

" Little ones will understand and delight in the stories
and poems." — Indianapolis News.

FIVE MINUTE STORIES

Cloth decorative, square 12mo, illustrated . $1.75
A charming collection of short stories and clever
poems for children.

MORE FIVE MINUTE STORIES

Cloth decorative, square 12mo, illustrated . $1.75
A noteworthy collection of short stories and poems

for children, which will prove as popular with mothers

as with boys and girls.

FIVE MICE IN A MOUSE TRAP

Cloth decorative, square 12mo, illustrated . $1.75
The story of their lives and other wonderful things
related by the Man in the Moon, done in the vernacular
from the lunacular form by Laura E. Richards.

A NEW BOOK FOR GIRLS

By Laura E. Richards

HONOR BRIGHT

Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated . . . $1.75

No girl ever deserved more to have a series of stories
written about her than does HONOR BRIGHT, the new-
est heroine of a talented author who has created many
charming girls. Born of American parents who die
in the far East, Honor spends her school days at the
Pension Madeline in Vevey, Switzerland, surrounded by
playmates of half a dozen nationalities. As are all of
Mrs. Richards' heroines, HONOR BRIGHT is the high-
est type of the young girl of America, vnth all the in-
dependence of character which is American to the core
in young as in old.
A — 7

THE PAOE COMPANY'S

THE BOYS' STORY OF THE
RAILROAD SERIES

By BuRTox E. Stevensok
Each large 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated,
'per volums $1.T5

THE YOUNG SECTION-HAND; Or, The Ad-

VENTURES OF AlLAN WeST.

" The whole range of section railroading is covered in
the story." — Chicago Post.

THE YOUNG TRAIN DISPATCHER

" A vivacious account of the varied and often hazard-
ous nature of railroad life." — Congregationalist.

THE YOUNG TRAIN MASTER

" It is a book that can be unreservedly commended to
anyone who loves a good, wholesome, thrilling, informing
yarn." — Passaic News.

THE YOUNG APPRENTICE; Or, Aixax West's
Chum.
" The story is intensely interesting." — Baltimore Sun.

BOY SCOUT STORIES

By Brewer Corcorax
Published with the approval of '* The Boy Scouts of
A merica."

Each, one volume, 12mo, cloth decorative, illus-
trated, per volume $1.75

THE BOY SCOUTS OF KENDALLVILLE

The story of a bright young factory worker who can-
not enlist, but his knowledge of woodcraft and wig-
wagging, gained through Scout practice, enables him to
foil a German plot to blow up the munitions factory.

THE BOY SCOUTS OF THE WOLF PATROL

The boys of Gillfield who were not old enough to go
to war found just as many thrills at home, chasing a
German spy.

THE BOY SCOUTS AT CAMP LOWELL

" The best book for boys I have ever read ! " says our
editor. Mr. Corcoran has again found enough exciting
material to keep the plot humming from cover to cover.

A — 8

BOOKS FOB YOUNG PEOPLE

THE MARJORY-JOE SERIES

By Alice E. Allen

Each one volume, cloth decorative, ISmo,
illustrated, 'per volume $1.50

JOE, THE CIRCUS BOY AND ROSEMARY

These are two of Miss Allen's earliest and most suc-
cessful stories, combined in a single volume to meet the
insistent demands from young people for these two par-
ticular tales.

THE MARTIE TWINS: Continuing the Ad-
ventures of Joe, the Circus Boy

"The chief charm of the story is that it contains so
much of human nature. It is so real that it touches
the heart strings." — New York Standard.

MARJORY, THE CIRCUS GIRL

A sequel to " Joe, the Circus Boy," and " The Martie
Twins."

MARJORY AT THE WILLOWS

Continuing the story of ^Marjory, the Circus Girl.

" Miss Allen does not write impossible stories, but de-
lightfully pins her little folk right down to this life of
ours, in which she ranges vigorously and delightfully."

— Boston Ideas.

MARJORY'S HOUSE PARTY: Or, What Hap-
pened at Clover Patch

" Miss Allen certainly knows how to please the cliil-
dren and tells them stories that never fail to charm."

— Madison Courier.
A — 9

THE PAGE COMPANY'S

IDEAL BOOKS FOR GIRLS

Each, one volume, cloth decorative, 12mo, . $1.10
A LITTLE CANDY BOOK FOR A LITTLE GIRL

By Amy L. Waterman.

•' This is a peculiarly interesting little book, written in
the simple, vivacious style that makes these little manuals
as delightful to read as they are instructive." — Nash-
ville Tennessean and American.

A LITTLE COOK-BOOK FOR A LITTLE GIRL

By Caroline French Benton.

This book explains how to cook so simply that no one
can fail to understand every word, even a complete
novice.

A LITTLE HOUSEKEEPING BOOK FOR A
LITTLE GIRL

By Caroline French Benton.

A little girl, home from school on Saturday mornings,
finds out how to make helpful use of her spare time, and
also how to take proper pride and pleasure in good
housework.

A LITTLE SEWING BOOK FOR A LITTLE
GIRL

By Louise Frances Cornell.

" It is comprehensive and practical, and yet revealingly
instructive. It takes a little girl who lives alone with
her mother, and shows how her mother taught her the
art of sewing in its various branches. The illustrations
aid materially." — Wilmington Every Evening.

A LITTLE PRESERVING BOOK FOR A
LITTLE GIRL

By Amy L. Waterman.

In simple, clear wording, Mrs. Waterman explains
every step of the process of preserving or "canning"
fruits and vegetables.

A LITTLE GARDENING BOOK FOR A LITTLE
GIRL

By Peter Martin.

This little volume is an excellent guide for the young
gardener. In addition to truck gardening, the book gives
valuable information on flowers, the planning of the
garden, selection of varieties, etc
A — 10

BOOKS FOR TOUJJa PEOPLE

THE LITTLE COLONEL BOOKS

(Trade Mark)

By Annie Fellows Johnston
Each large 12mo, cloth, illustrated, per volume . $1.90
THE LITTLE COLONEL STORIES

(Trade Mark)

Being three " Little Colonel " stories in the Cosv Comer
Series, "The Little Colonel," "Two Little Knights of
Kentucky," and " The Giant Scissors," in a single volume,

THE LITTLE COLONEL^S HOUSE PARTY

(Trade Mark)

THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HOLIDAYS

(Trade Mark)

THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HERO

(Trade Mark)

THE LITTLE COLONEL AT BOARDING-

(Trade Mark)

SCHOOL
THE LITTLE COLONEL IN ARIZONA

(Trade Mark)

THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS

(Trade Mark)

VACATION
THE LITTLE COLONEL, MAID OF HONOR

(Trade Mark)

THE LITTLE COLONEL'S KNIGHT COMES

(Trade Mark)

RIDING
THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHUM, MARY

WARE (Trade Mark)

MARY WARE IN TEXAS

MARY WARE'S PROMISED LAND

These twelve volumes^ boxed as a set, $-22. SO.
A — 11

THE PAGE COMPANTS

THE ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART

Cloth decorative, with special designs and

illustrations $1.25

In choosing her title, Mrs. Johnston had in mind
" The Road of the Loving Heart," that famous high-
way, built by the natives of Hawaii, from their settle-
ment to the home of Robert Louis Stevenson, as a
memorial of their love and respect for the man who
lived and labored among them, and whose example of
a loving heart has never been forgotten. This story of
a little princess and her faithful pet bear, who finally
do discover " The Road of the Loving Heart," is a mas-
terpiece of sympathy and understanding and beautiful
thought.

THE JOHNSTON JEWEL SERIES

Each small IGmo, cloth decorative, with frontis-
piece and decorative text borders, per volume $0.75

m THE DESERT OF WAITING: The Legend

OF Camelback Mountain.

THE THREE WEAVERS: A Fairy Tale for

Fathers and Mothers as Well as for Their
Daughters.

KEEPING TRYST: A Tale of Kiis-o Arthur's Time.

THE LEGEND OF THE BLEEDING HEART

THE RESCUE OF PRINCESS WINSOME:

A Fairy Play for Old axd Youxg.

THE JESTER'S SWORD

THE LITTLE COLONEL'S GOOD TIMES
BOOK

Uniform in size with the Little Colonel Series . $3.50
Bound in white kid (morocco) and gold . . 5.00
Cover design and decorations by Peter Verberg.
" A mighty attractive volume in which the owner may
record the good times she has on decorated pages, and
under the directions as it were of Annie Fellows John-
ston."— Buffalo Express.
A — 12

BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

THE LITTLE COLONEL DOLL BOOK — First
Series

Quarto, boards, printed in colors . . . .$1.90

A series of " Little Colonel " dolls. Each has several

changes of costume, so they can be appropriately clad

for the rehearsal of any scene or incident in the series.

THE LITTLE COLONEL DOLL BOOK — Sec-
ond Series

Quarto, boards, printed in colors . . . $1.90

An artistic series of paper dolls, including not only
lovable Mary Ware, the Little Colonel's chimi, but many
another of the much loved characters which appear in
the last three volumes of the famous " Little Colonel
Series."

THE STORY OF THE RED CROSS: as Told to
the Little Colonel

Cloth decorative, 13mo, illustrated . . . $1.25

This story originally appeared in " The Little Colonel's
Hero," but the publishers decided to issue it as a
separate volume.

" No one could tell the story of the Red Cross with
more vividness and enthusiasm than this author, and
here she is at her best. No book published during the
Great War is more valuable and timely than this appeal-
ing story of the beginning of the Red Cross." — New
York Tribune.

" It deserves a place in every school as well as in
every home where the work of the Red Cross is appre-
ciated."— Evening Express, Portland, Me.

" Not only VERY interesting, but has large educa-
tional value." — Lookout, Cincinnati, Ohio.

JOEL: A BOY OF GALILEE

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated . . . $1.90

" The book is a very clever handling of the greatest

event in the history of the world." — Rochester, N. Y,,

Herald.

A — 13

THE PAGE COMPANY'S

ONLY HENRIETTA

By Lela Horn Richards.

Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated . . . $1.90

" It is an inspiring story of the unfolding of life for a
young girl — a story in which there is plenty of action
to hold interest and wealth of delicate sympathy and
understanding that appeals to the hearts of young and
old." — Pittsburgh Leader.

"A rare and gracious picture of the unfolding of
life for the young girl, told with sympathy and under-
standing." — Louisville Times.

"This is one of the very nicest books for sixteen-
year-olds that w^e have seen in many months. It is gay,
sweet and natural." — Lexington Herald.

HENRIETTA'S INHERITANCE: A Sequel to
" Only Henrietta "

By Lela Horn Richards.

Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated . . . $1.90

The leading characters in this new story are: Hen-
rietta Kirby; Miss Hester Crosby, an old maiden lady;
Agnes, Miss Crosby's servant girl; Bowdle, Miss Crosby's
cook; Mrs. Lovell; Uncle Doctor; Stephen Summers;
Dick Bentley; and several others. The host of readers
ready for the sequel to " Only Henrietta " will have a
treat in store for them.

" One of the most noteworthy stories for girls issued
this season. The life of Henrietta is made very real,
and there is enough incident in the narrative to balance
the delightful characterization." — Providence Journal.

"The heroine deserves to have this story develop into
a series of books; a wholesome, sparkling, satisfying
story of American girlhood." — New Era Magazine.
A— 14